


The Wolf (Yellow Eyes)

by F0rce0fnatur3



Category: Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale), Naruto
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:35:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 34,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22807189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/F0rce0fnatur3/pseuds/F0rce0fnatur3
Summary: What happens when you find the wolf but it's actually a skin walker? Yikes...
Relationships: Lee - Relationship, here we go again with my poor oc being in a situation, oclee, red riding hood - Relationship, rika - Relationship, sasukexlee - Relationship, wolf - Relationship, yellow eyes - Relationship
Comments: 8
Kudos: 1
Collections: Fairy Tales





	1. Under the Juniper Tree

The woods are lovely, dark, damp, and deep. They hold many things and take to your grave the secrets that you keep. The earth beneath their roots have bellyfuls of swollen meat, the crows are circling above, savoring the sweet treat. They dive and soar gliding on a stale breeze, they move effortlessly down through the bough of the trees. And when they are perched upon your shuttering frozen shoulder, the gleam in those witch cauldron specks, wait patiently, sinisterly eyeing you until you draw your last forsaken breath. And when you finally feel all hope drain from your body, your final thoughts are that of you wish to be no creature’s meal, but if only you would have told someone, that you were to wander within the dark wood, but now you still. Paralyzed by regret, as the crows lunch lies beneath his talons, finally dead. It gives a hearty triumphant caw! Snapping its beak into waning warm flesh, the last thing one saw is the spindly arms of the trees, mockingly pointing at another victim that will decay beneath its depths.

The book lay lazily against the tiny frame of a woman lulling beneath a large juniper tree. Here her long lashes fanned over her rosy cheeks as bits of sunlight filtered through the rustling leaves coyly tempting her to wake. It was safe to doze during the day when the world was still being warmed by the suns noon zenith, but as twilight began to ascend the preview of what was to come in the following months reared its ugly head in the teeth of the night’s icy temperatures.

As the woman laid unaware of the time fleeting from her and apex of the day squandering in a threatening gloom of icy fingers, she was blissfully unaware of any of it. But the breeze that bit at the parts of bare skin peeking from her dress, and the flashing dying embers of the sun above the tree shook about to get her attention, all signs went unnoticed with no avail to her waking. The trees watched her as if someone plucked her from one of the tales in her book and gingerly placed her here making sure to fan out her chestnut hair, paint her lips the color of pale roses, and thoughtfully completed the ensemble of the sleeping beauty by giving her the task of falling asleep to a good read and propped the book pages down against the gentle fall and rise of her chest.

But with cold comes the cruel hissing upon the wind which lashed its forked tongue into her ear causing her to bolt upright with a start. The world was far dimmer than when she had set out that afternoon determined to get through these morbid poems for the sake of having something to do other than sew and cook. The light was a lens and she knew that any moment now it would wink and there would be no more light until twelve more hours when morning would creep through her shutters. Urgency got her to her feet. The book protested when the pages met with the ground with an oomph.

She saw the pale thumbnail lazily look upon her at the base of the trees and a smattering of stars was yawning awake in the blue and black sky. She touched the skin upon her bare throat realizing she could no longer afford to leave her house without the protection of a shawl or jacket. Now more than ever she wished to have the heavy fabric in her hands when this afternoon it had been too hot to even think on it. She straightened herself making sure all her bindings upon her corset were secure and hadn’t come lose for she was guilty of being one to toss and turn in sleep. She found it suspicious that she had lied this still as if the trees had weaved a foreboding spell upon her as she dreamt. Then again as she gazed upon the title on the spine of her book she dashed that thought away and knew her silly spell had been all the working of that poem she read before she fell into a nice slumber.

She felt something crunch as she moved and plucked the few leaves that had crumpled into her hair before making for the trail. The summer equinox had been fighting on with every last might it had and Lily was grateful for it. She was dreading the winter. Two winters ago her village had almost starved, it had dragged on miserably and despite the large amount of food they had all stashed away, the brittle cold stayed stubbornly though March and just barely petered out to the middle of May. Normally March was when the snow gave its retreat and they could begin the plowing season or hunting but that year had been so miserable and terrible that hunters who went out in search of game were lost to the cold or buried beneath the squalls of storms.

Since then, she hated winter. The only part of it she liked was during the silent snow falls or when she would wake to the mornings of golden sun allotted to peak through the ribs of the forest showcasing the frozen thatches that clung to the limbs. They glittered and dazzled reminding the forlorn that there was something more other than this chaos. She prayed the meat wouldn’t be too frozen this year to thaw when the scrape of their bellies would be hungriest. The frost was brief to those who worked the ungodly morning when the first rays of light hadn’t yet settled upon the earth and they spread world that the frost had begun. She felt the weight of those rumors now as each thicket of grass crunched beneath her flats with a satisfying crunch like fresh lettuce plucked from the fields.

She could see the little chilled bumps of the snow that coated each blade like lace. Her breath plumed around her and her body began shaking. Not from the darkness of the wood. She could hear the last few people working the fields and coming back from a day’s hunt barreling to the village. She couldn’t help but smile thinking of the giant magnetic force that called upon all her people once the night threatened to cast its veil over the hardworking hands seeking sanctuary in their homes. The constant hum of axes breaking wood over and over at all hours of day until now had driven her mad. She knew it was for everyone’s hearth to keep them warm but they had been preparing for this since winter broke in March as expected and now it was almost November. She supposed they wouldn’t stop until the first blanket settled. Her and the other women collected peat to start the fires and she could smell the damp earthy substance stocked in her friends’ homes every time she entered to deliver whatever she was assigned to that day. Lily was known as their main delivery woman. She always had her signature red cape and hood so those who needed her could pick her out and beckon her to their hearth. She was also famous for the large woven basket she practically had fastened to her arm.

She worked just as hard as the others and was always kept busy so it was no surprise to any of them when they saw her slip away to the wood for a bought of peace every once in a while. She was always being hounded over. Deliver this bread here, give this peat to these thirty homes, make sure this list gets to blah blah blah. At least she was getting exercise and tokens for her hard work. She enjoyed the tailor the best. He always fashioned her practical shoes to wear for every occasion. After enough deliveries he generously offered to make her custom shoes of her choice. She had asked him for boots lined with the softest fur from rabbits to keep her feet warm. He had imported the lining of seal skin to decorate the base of her boot to keep from any of the water from seeping into it. The fat from the animal had definitely kept her little feet heated and never once had any slick cold snow saturated into her boot. Her socks and stockings were always humming with warmth.

The flats had a rubbery material that kept her feet comfortable for the hours she had to spend walking and standing but also put a spring in her step. She also had a pair for mud, for deep snow, and even for the summer time. Now he was probably the wealthiest man in her village thanks to her advertising the magic that each pair she wore protected her from the elements during any occasion. His work became advanced. He graduated to tougher hides like cow, moose, and sometimes lining them with parts from animals that had the most fat for winter like bear. It kept ones foot insulated and toasty. So now she was thankful she was gaining ground to get to her home.

She placed the Tales of the Dark Marrow of Mother Marrow into her basket and pulled out a scone one of her earlier deliveries gifted to her. She munched at the buttery texture of the crumbling delicacy and wondered to her home at the outskirts of the town. Unlike its twin to the east her village didn’t have a giant wall to greet her. The torches were lit, candles in windows guttered at the rising spouts of wind trickling through the drafty cracks of windows, and a large glow illuminated her path a stark thirteen feet in a giant halo. Her people welcomed the natural beauty of the land they had built upon and didn’t fear the things with teeth that lurked in the woods like their twin to the east.

There were rumors that drifted to them when friends and family made their way in the summer to trade what our land could not provide and whispers among the people told of a grand story about a wolf or bear dragging off with straggler children who were not within the safe confines of their homes during the night. Since then a giant wall had been commissioned. I remember my neighbor taking a leave of absence to help with its construction, but he brought back another tale about its origin in which someone was said to have seen a giant swooping creature like a witch come down from the bough of the trees and steal away babies in the night to sustain their immortality.

Lily had shuttered at the thought and begged him not to go into any more detail. How could a human being come up with such disgusting and disturbing details? I unlatched the heavy bolt to my door slipping inside and making sure to lock myself inside and lock it. I wasn’t afraid of the things in the wood more than certain people in our village. Though we were peaceful like every large group we had those who still found ways to cause trouble and turmoil within the ranks of our society. I preferred my privacy. But when you delivered things to every nook and cranny of the place you reside in people sometimes hold you captive in order to talk or vent their frustrations. In a way it was nice having all these secrets that I wrote down in a leather bound journal hidden in a small slot on a very high beam of my ceiling. But holding terrible secrets was also dangerous. I was once approached by one of the Bucksy brothers, three in total, the oldest and largest one wishing to sequester information on a black smith. When burning his fingertips over the fire hadn’t worked to loosen his tongue he decided I would be better to squeal. I insisted on my innocence and I was thankful for my neighbors return that day for her kept a suspicious eye on Buck as I shut my door feigning to be tired from the days work.

I told Rika about what had happened, this being my neighbor, and he vowed to be there as much as possible when he wasn’t spirited away to other parts of the village to work. I prepared to cook a nice stew, Rika had left a rabbit hanging on the slot of my roof dangling terrifyingly in my face when I returned home. I set to work on shearing away its poor little limbs and carving it into chunks and cubes letting the meat cook in the fray of bubbling veggies I plucked the night before. Next I chalked my hands with flour letter the sour dough bread rise in the brick over, the small mouth yawning when I opened the door and slid the pudgy jiggling frame against the stone and closing it once more. I gathered my gooseberry jelly readying it with a butter knife and sat to wait for all my food to work in harmony.

I pumped a bath from the little lever in my bathroom and slid into the confines of the hot water after making sure the chimney from the hearth where my fire was baking the soup was open beneath the tub and the flames licked at the belly of it warming it until I killed the vent by switching it off and slid scrubbing away the skin of the earth I collected during my afternoon nap. Rika had helped me construct my home and told me where I could lead little pipelines like arteries to a heart beneath my home in order to make things a little easier for a spinster to work herself. He was my childhood friend, my mentor, as he worked her came home and tutored me in the ways of men. In return I taught him to read and write as we grew up and even traded certain secrets about certain corrupt people here. I trusted him to keep them as much as I trusted my dog at the time of his life, to stay by my side and warn me of intruders of animals prowling the grounds.

We learned behind our doors, keeping silent when we knew the tutelage of converting ours secrets to one another would be viewed as immoral and blasphemy. Women were meant to do the mending, cooking, and washing. Men were meant to do the labor, the hunting, the hard work. But our exchanged advanced our limited scopes and we better understood the boundaries we were forced into.

I enjoyed inventing things the most. In the confines of my home I had learned that a lady could shave the hairs on her legs and underarms by fashioning the tip of a man’s razor blade and carefully filing the tilt of the blade to an angle in order to get closer to the skin. With a steady surgeons hand I stroked up along the grain of the follicles and sighed contently stroking the tips of my fingers over the silk left behind from the razors bite. In the summer I didn’t dare hide the nakedness of my legs like the others did with long skirts, or bulky wool stockings. In fact I was one of the rare few who allowed her skirts to barely brush against the calf of my knee. Men gawked, women scowled, and all the while I was a wonderful liar claiming I had always been less…blessed with hair. I giggled thinking how ridiculous this all sounded but couldn’t help it.

My people were not ignorant as to think women were witches, but the village also being repressed with certain ways of thinking also made it a fine edge to keep in line. I did my duty without complaint, without rumor, and without causing unnecessary drama so therefore any of my other strange habits weren’t brow raising. Rika and I heavily leaned on one another for that. I would claim he got me wood and I paid him in meals or pennies, and in turn his house was cleaned by me scrubbed and organized. But the reality was we both did the domestic duties to our own households. I could hear the angry gurgling of water, the hissing of flame as the tears bubbled from my pot, and I pulled on my slip grateful the shutters were facing away from the neighbors view. It clung to my drenched form as I pulled the lever holding the pot away from the hearth. It fluidly held the pot outside of the fanning flames which angrily simmered back down and the bubbling surface smoothed save the heavy soup and chunks peaking from the top.

Now to wait for it to cool. I scooped a hearty portion out as well as turning the vent off over the burning coals of the brick oven and letting the bread stiffen out before settling into my chair Rika had gifted to me for my name day five years ago. He had plumped up the frame with goose feathers which now were formed to the shape of my rump and my legs rested on the ottoman as I flipped through the book of poems I had stashed in my basket. My large red cape was resting on the peg by the fire. The poor worn thing needed a bath of its own that morning before I departed to the hairline of the woods

I never was one for being scared but I had taken an interest in fashioning my own poems, so I studied the only book we had at the library. Mister Driskell had pleaded for an educated woman like me to quit the foot traffic business and work in his shop. There were a handful of educated women here aside the ones determined to forsake their education to open bakeries, and shops. Forever destined to live a life of powdered palms and greased elbows. I preferred the freedom of lazily being beckoned to the dregs of the wilderness. Even here in my sanctuary most of what was outside was here inside. I had found a few tools used by the Indians of the north, scattered at the heart of the forest. I found rocks with unique surfaces, crystals, shells, antler bones the felt still clinging to the abandoned skulls of the deer.

I found my favorite poem of all. Not the one about the poor little bird sitting upon a branch minding her own business eating berries when a cat sneaks up and eats the full little bird, the one about the yellow eyes in the wood. I found wolves to be beautiful when they weren’t in packs and starving. She caught glimpses of strays or forsaken rogues as they roved the floor of the forest. Their stark coats contrasting against the earthy tones, others defied the colors of nature itself. Some seemed to be sculpted from the clay of the roots beneath them barely keeping them visible until they blinked or moved. They were curious about her as she was about them. She sketched them and gave them names. Her favorite she called yellow eyes. He had dark black fur the color of the sky at midnight, but those blazing gold orbs that pierced through her drew her in. She wondered what instinct he followed. Where he’d been. He liked to visit her during the spring and winter. She was expecting him to be here soon. When the snow would cling to his contrasted soft coat and gingerly lay upon his black lashes of tar.

She found the poem in her book symbolized him perfectly and that was what she called him. Upon closer inspection of her getting up early one morning and waiting to watch and put to paper anything more on this particular subject, she was drawn to the large paws. Most of her kind would claim them to be large paws of a killer but she was drawn to the faint tuft of white curving along one of the pockets of his toes. His large onyx claws protruding from the white like a black sleet mountain against a December morning. But she needn’t look to that to know it was her wolf. She could just tell by the understanding stare they now came to share whenever he was passing through. Usually he was on the scent of a moose from the night before, but in the wee hours of the morning when she’d open the hatch to her shutter and peer out at him three tree links in, he would pause and look at her. Nose slightly twitching as if he caught her scent on the wind suddenly. His ears would perk, his mane along his throat shook as he let the tangle of rain mist away and he continued on with his prowling. She watched the gentle sweep of his tail scrape against the forest floor and giggle when a leaf would drag along with it.

She spoke aloud:

“ Be wary when you walk into the wood, for you might not like what you find, be careful what you see in the wood, for you might not like what you catch in between the trees. Be wary of the large things with teeth, the larger the berth the quieter its feet, beware of the ancient things born from roots, it doesn’t matter the soft tread of your boots. Be cautious of the hearing of the wind itself, for your fear carries upon its shelf, beware beware oh do please take great care to have a pointed object of your own, because the hunger that aches in the ancient things is unshakable and it lives within its skin, it creeps and quivers to the bone. It acts on instinct, it does not rationalize with logic, oh dear little stranger be wary not to wander, because while your thoughts are jumbled with the things you must ponder, the thing with teeth it sees you always and it knows how to creep. Watch your step the forest is against you, one wrong move and a snap of a twig and you’ll be dead before you can even rationalize it. Watch oh watch and when you have to squint, remember the things that tear you apart don’t have to think, they don’t strain to see, they come upon you with vengeful need. Oh watch oh watch where you go because if you get lost, it doesn’t need to know, if you can’t find the direction of your home, the thing following you merely continues to roam. “

The title appropriately named Yellow Eyes. And that was the name she had given her wolf.

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The spinning of stars and the rise of the moon pulled like the tides at the aching chest of the beast that sat panting beneath the juniper tree. His muzzle was pressed to the ground which was still pressed by the weight of one of the animals that lived in the large huts outside his home. He knew that scent. It was made of the same things he was made of. But the animal smelt like the wildflowers he ran through during the hot days. He enjoyed the shade they offered and the scent wasn’t too bad either. Even if it was arduous and potent and hurt his nose a little, he knew the other enemies that could creep up on him would find it just as distractingly annoying and move on. So when his matted self, collapsed beneath the sweeping petals and leaves of the flowers he found it easy to sleep.

He pawed it the ground raking over the earth to find more of her smell buried beneath but it faded with the turn of his paw. He ground his nose until the dirt clung to the wet perspiration of his nose, which he sneezed away in a fit of ten snotty exhalations. His head was spinning, like the strong winds that he felt would be coming very soon. Their shrieks assaulted his ears and when it was deafening to hunt outside he saddled himself inside an abandoned cave or overturned roots of a tree. The depression allowing his body to fold into a lump circle as his tail fanned over his face. He enjoyed the laziness of his day today and was excited when the familiar smell drew him to this very spot. She was here. He knew she was female but still was unsure what kind of animal she was. She walked like a feline yet didn’t have hair like one…she wasn’t bulbous like a bear, or grumpy like a moose. Her kind were always smelling, looking, and sounding different. Some were angry at his presence, others fearful, but hers was at ease. Maybe she was like him. He also knew she was female based off her pheromone trail.

Today he could tell she had bathed in the dirt like he sometimes enjoyed rolling in, sometimes the patches could be stinky but those days were for when his enemies wanted to hurt him, but for some reason she stayed a long time rolling in this dirt bath. He wondered why…there were no other hairless animals that followed her, no dangerous smells, but her scent was very strong here which meant she had been here for more than one arch of the sun in the sky. But why…? He followed the odd smell of her feet that had strange hooves on them, sometimes they were furry like a bears…but this one was stinky like the animals in the large wood stacks had made them. He watched her slip into her stack of tree trunks and limbs and waited for her to open the square part that showed her face but she never came. He could see in the cracks of the wood illuminate and knew she was in there but dared not go closer. That man with the large sharp thing was outside by her log pile breaking down more saplings.

He didn’t like the things that glint. Perhaps they plucked large teeth from creatures that were taller than the trees in his home and fastened them to sticks? During a close call when he was a pup one almost bit him. He wondered why the animal didn’t use his teeth after he bared them but instead swung the giant tooth that was curved and a pale silver bit into his side. The pain it brought made him forever cautious. His mother had warned him of such things. ‘your snooping will get you into trouble. Just stay away from the hairless squirrels’. But on his own observation they were not small like the little creatures he could catch and kill. These things were bigger, meaner, and brandished monster teeth. He least liked the long sticks that made noise like thunder and was followed by a terrible bite that ripped through muscle and bone. But nothing had been by him and yet white hot pain ripped through his shoulder blade forever causing a small niche over the curved wing. But she did not have any of those things. She did not yell at him to move on, did not have monster teeth or long sticks made of thunder. She watched him as he had once watched ‘the giant squirrels’ as a pup. And he loved her distinct scent.

When the glow had dimmed and the homes went quiet, he dared to approach and sniff at the border of her stick home. As he arched his head to the sky he could smell the faint remains of something that was dead. The little string that fluttered in the wind still holding strong smells as it whipped in the wind. Whatever was there was probably eaten. There were logs piled along the outside wall which he wondered why one would hoard logs? Sure squirrels hoarded nuts, and owls mice, and bears fat for the winter, but why would she want all this? He wondered if it was surrounding something in its center and gingerly poked his nose against the hard edge of one of the rings. One log toppled from above his head threatening to crush his skull but he was quicker and darted from it. Don’t disturb them he thought as he continued his perimeter search.

He smelt the last place she was at and put both pads on the door butting his nose to one of the slits in the large flat log taking in deep breaths. She was definitely in there. He wanted in. He wanted to smell her, to relish in the feel of her fur. Maybe…he could roll on her to capture some of her pheromones. He could also in turn rub off his and let the other males that surrounded her know he was in his care. But he didn’t understand the magic they used and couldn’t make the flat wood budge. There was a distant soft song calling him on the wind. His ears perked. He recognized that scrape, those little thumps. Rabbit. Just like what was hanging on that string. Now he was hungry for that, his stomach rumbled and he knew it was time to fill it so he stalked off once more into the wood vowing to come back before the winds would hold him up somewhere warm until it was safe to hunt once more.


	2. Spilled Blood

The squall rushed from the foothills of the mountain and engulfed our sleepy town in a matter of minutes. All work yielded until the gusts that pushed the stinging snow subsided to a dull roar. Every sensible person was cooped up inside their homes, rump in warm chairs, feet fixed toward the hearth of the fire, and eyes watching the white veil whip around outside while I in my red hood dawned was trudging through the snow. Already we had three feet which dragged the hem of my skirts and made it more a challenge to get to my destination. Mr. Dreskell asked me of this one favor before I retired back home. Since I was stockpiling novels for the shut in, he begged me to deliver the batch of books Mrs. Parcal reserved, clear across town.

I begrudgingly agreed and my reward would be owed once the thaw began. The wind was insistent on exposing me to its cold underbelly whipping away my hood. I could hear the books angrily jostling inside the confines of my latched basket. I knew it was going to be a terrible feat and therefore dawned my leather strap which I fastened around my shoulder and midsection. There would be no escape despite it whipping against my side. I reached her doorstep after dismissing others who beckoned me to do their tasks which I apologized for and carried on with just this one. I wanted to be like the others and be safe and warm in the mouth of my hearth.

Mrs. Parcal opened the door urging me to come in and share a cup of tea and cakes with her before I retired back to my home. She begged me to stay until the storm subsided but I saw her three children like caged animals bouncing practically off the walls. I knew they would claw at me and scream to be let free. I felt for her but at the same time I wasn’t keen on getting a headache either this day. I handed her the pile of books and once more apologized for the urgency to get home before the worst would sweep down and make the world a blanket of white.

I thanked the Saints and Gods when I reached my porch opening the heavy latch on the door until something caught the corner of my eye. The links to the chicken coop had failed in the storm and now sagged in a gaping hole that three of my more dimwitted chickens escaped from. The little house was locked to keep the cold out for them yet these three must have somehow flew to the very high window and meandered out into the storm. They were heading toward the hairline of the wood. I shrugged off the strap tossing the basket to the rug in the house and latched it shut chasing after the fowl that were squabbling into the jaws of frozen death.

I dragged my feet gathering the heavy anchor of my skirts and cloak to free my own chicken legs to grant grander strides through the weight of the ice. I managed to scoop up two of the chickens setting them back in and closing the shutter of the window charging after the other bird. I gained ground and as I was upon it the bird squabbled and ran.

“I’m trying to save you, you bloody brainless bird!” I was ready to just let the thing succumb to its own fate but I knew I’d feel guilty if I didn’t at least try. The storm was getting worse fast, I could barely see my fingers in front of me and I relied on the frantic clucking of the bird which seemed to echo off every damn tree around me. I saw the plume of sunlight yellow feathers in front of me and heard the scraping of its talons as it turned its head to keep one wary eye on me. Maybe I could sneak up on it…I went around to a thick trunk to escape its field of view and the stupid thing changed direction gaining further distance.

Somehow it was distracted and forgot momentarily I was chasing it as another rise of the wind threatened to take its feet from the surface of the snow, she ruffled her feathers flapping to keep herself grounded and I sprang ready to grab whatever part of her I could. As I reached for her I saw something deadly emerge from the shroud of the storm, its pearly white daggers gleaming in the refracted light of the snow. With a sickening crunch the large muzzle clamped around the body of the bird releasing a woeful cry from the hen who was silent a moment later. I let out a scream terrified to having come mere inches close to death falling back into the snow on my rump. The wolf thrashed his head making sure for good measure the bird wasn’t going to get up. Her neck sagged under its jaws and suddenly it was aware of me.

Yellow eyes. It began getting to work plucking the feather away from its pimpled flesh baring its teeth to warn me not to lunge for it. I was happy to oblige and I needed distance. Cautiously I began backing away glad for the storms interference. Never run from a predator my father told me. It had a fresh kill but that didn’t mean it didn’t weigh the options of having a more---larger meal with more meat and warm blood. I had to count on it being sated with the bird for now, so I moved cautiously and slowly as not to draw its eye. The storm allowed me some cover at random times but I couldn’t bank on that either.

I practically crawled for ten feet before I dared to get to my feet and move slowly. I never turned my back to the predator either. When all I could see was a wall of white I figured it could no longer see more nor did it have any interest in pursuing me so I turned and ran for it. I saw the tree line open and knew just a few more lunges and I would be home. Suddenly I heard something loud and crackling fly past me. Why was there a hunter now…? Did they think I was a deer? Could they not see me? My mind was whirling with questions and even thought of thunder snow until I heard the echoing cry of an animal behind me. I whirled around and saw yellow eyes collapse into the snow, scarlet bleeding into white.

I listened as Rika rushed toward me shouting to get out of the way but I felt compelled to block his path. I waved my arms at him to signal for him to slow his determined run. We were both breathless as his eyes fixated on the motionless beast behind me. I gripped his shoulders to keep him from raising the rifle or running past me.

“Don’t!”

“Let me finish it, you don’t want it to suffer do you?”

“No but it wasn’t trying to kill me…”

“It was running after you!” I could hear the hurt in his voice. Still, I kept my numb fingers fastened to his clothing.

“Just please---help me get it inside.”

“Are you mad?!”

“Please!”

“No. It’s a wild beast. Let me kill it.”

“He’s harmless!”

“That’s why it was going to pounce on you.” His eyes glanced down at me with disapproving and I knew he itched to yank away and bury a bullet in the poor beasts skull. He was entertaining me. He pulled away as if I was made of a husk and trudged closer to the shallow rise and fall of the whining animal. Once more I flung in front of him.

“I said no!” This time he shoved me into the soft powder that stung my cold limbs. I grit my teeth and watched the barrel press to the large canine’s skull. His eyes rolling up to confront the small pinhole that would end his life. The animal didn’t protest, nor did he whine or whimper. I heard the hammer cock and watched him shoulder the butt of the rifle securing it in place to absorb the aftershock. All logic faded away with the madness of the weather and I threw myself over the wolf. The free flutter of the cape enveloping the stark midnight of the wolf reddening it even more. I looked up at him, Rika’s expression was so startled I couldn’t imagine what he was thinking in that moment. His eyes went to the beast, he was daring the thing to thrash and move a single muscle or else he would release the steel bullet from its chamber and let it worm into the membrane of the large thing.

Even being in the outdoors, yellow eyes was warm and utterly soft. A thing untouched by man and made to be natural and thrive in a world where we could only give our mock imitation of what true softness felt like. His breathing was shallow, I felt the warmth of his wound spread over my knee and I shook my head.

“Help me get him inside.”

“He will eat you, Lily. I will not allow that to happen.”

“If it happens then it happens, please…”

“Lily.” His voice was low, dangerous, a warning he would only give once and she knew it. It was a kindness he was warning her at all.

“I’ve never asked you for anything, I am asking you now.” There was a duality thrashing inside my body. A battle of cold and fire. The warmth was in my eyes threatening to spill over, it fluttered in my chest like a bird with wings made of fire. But being exposed for almost near an hour despite my layers had let the cold creep slowly into the marrow of my bones like a melee worm burrowing into a carcass.

I saw his jaw clench, I saw the vein in it twitch and I knew he was mulling this over. He’d rather drag himself belly first over barbed wire than fulfill this request but I pleaded with him mentally as much as I could wearing my heart on my sleeve. The hammer returned to an unarmed click and then his thumb brushed over the safety turning it on and handing it barrel up to me. I obliged without a word of protest as the heavy weight slumped in my arms and my feet subtracted even further into the snow. I listened to him grunting his efforts as he gathered both the legs up and lifting yellow eyes under his breastbone while the beasts head already looked still with death as it lolled during each endeavor Rika was making to keep balance.

Despite me doing my best to shoo Rika out of my house he insisted on staying. I knew the ice and snow was melting like a lake from his body because my rug soaked it up and was beginning to take on a moldy smell. I hissed for him to remove his boots at the door on that rug at least but he refused to let me tend to the wolf without one of his watchful eyes on me or it. I got to work while the beast was unconscious carefully prying the first buck shot from the flank of its leg using my surgeons hands to extract it without having the fine beaked needle points of the tweezers stab into the surrounding flesh of the entry wound. It would have helped had this had an exit wound but it would have also taken more time to heal for the poor beast.

With a satisfying plunk into the glass next to me I wiped the sweat from my brown and got to work applying healing ointments and jellies. Rika tried convincing me to burn the flesh shut with a hot iron but I refused and took to stitching the mouth closed. Then I wrapped gauze around its hips, under his belly, and over the wound on the top of his leg until it was snuggly clutching him.

After pacifying Rika with promises of being careful, shirking off chain linking the animal, and telling him I’d have to be alone with him anyway, he finally begrudgingly left satisfied that I would keep the wild creature sedated with greens I found in the spring. But it wasn’t before he threatened to camp out in my home until the beast was on its way.

I was sure the salve I applied would help the area and I knew in a few weeks, if the wound didn’t get an infection, he would be walking around again. This was less dangerous and disgusting than when I witnessed Rika pop a large boil on one of the cattle’s necks. I shivered at the memory. I made sure to keep my distance. What did I expect to happen when he woke up? Lots of thrashing, biting, and maybe even mauling. He was on my non-saturated rug near the fire and I was thankful that the animals breathing was going back to a normal steady pace.

I waited expecting the terrified animal to tear my house to pieces but somewhere along the way I blacked out. I had forgotten about my own bodies warning that I had reached my limit of exhaustion and as soon as I got a comfortable warm position beneath my piles of furs I fell fast asleep. It wasn’t until the swaths of sunlight peaked through the slats of my shutters and lift me from my heavy weighted slumber and my body burst to life at the sight of yellow eyes only an inch from my face.

I imagined a hundred different ways my death would go. Lots of blood, not too much, a total gore fest, a quick death, a painless one, a long suffering one. My mind drowned in them. All my muscles locked holding me in place. At least the couch was in the way, but that wouldn’t stop this creature roped in muscles and sheer power from lunging onto my lap and ripping my exposed throat open. Something flashed, like ambers milky sheen when held to the sunlight and I knew in that moment what death was. I diluted myself in thinking this animal had cousins of which were domesticated. This was something wild and untamable. This wasn’t a lap dog, this was a killing machine like the aquatic animals with teeth in the sea in the pages I read. Like the large scaled lizards in the warmer climates of the earth. Something foreign strangled itself in my throat. A sheep bleating for its life before the butchers knife silenced its last will and testament.

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The temperature beneath my pads gave a bit of bite so I kept moving to keep the blood in my veins pumping. What better way to do that than have a go in the snow? I ran in no particular direction letting all the smells absorb into my subconscious. Deer, rabbit, squirrel, ermine, lynx, black bear that shit itself while sleeping. I thought that was pretty hilarious, my mouth was wide open catching icy specks as my pink tongue lolled out the side and I watched as I made the faded sun dance through the trees with all the ground I gained. A herd of sitka deer avoided my run as I bound over the powedery surface easily moving through it like warm flesh to pearly teeth.

I felt every fiber of my being hum to life as I tread through the forest. It’s harder to gage the point of day when the sun is always hidden behind the gray slate of monotonous sky. There were good days when all was still and the clouds allowed it to bulge out from the parted puffs of cotton. Now we relied on the electricity in the air. It stroked through every hair on our bodies and warned us of storms, of the change in temperature, and so I gathered it was the middle of the day. I felt my limbs pulsate, all the muscles in my body were twitching. I was ready for a much needed nap. I found the hallow of a tree which I began digging out just enough to back myself into for shelter and let my paws overlap one another as a makeshift comfort tool. As my muzzle rest over them I watched images of my pack from a time before, going after a tasty looking moose. We all signaled to one another our plan and set it into motion driving the animal to where we wanted the brute to go. Its back legs bucking at omega’s jaw, I watched as her mate tended to her to make sure her neck didn’t snap before getting back into formation leaving a dazed omega to rub at her sore maw. We charged over valleys and hills until the moose had enough and reared back on his haunches lowering the bones on his head and threatening to sweep us off our legs or gourd us. We all took our positions, waiting to spring if it charged. Sometimes this happened when we hunted. The food would get the urge to fight back and it was a plight to exhaust us or make us retreat. The burning hunger in our bellies were enough to keep our frantic minds grounded. He charged the small pup only four springs old but strong with muscle. He leapt from his spot avoiding the sharp edge plummeting to him. Now the brute watched and snorted, snot flying from his muzzle as his mad eyes rolled and went after the members of the pack that weren’t in the hunting party but waited in the shadows to pounce once the meal was taken down. It broke our ranks and charged.

My body jolted awake when the wind howled into my ear assaulting the sensitive tissue inside. I snapped my jaws at the invisible foe and shook my head turning them so they curved away from its direction. A squall. I knew they could come and go in the shake of a badgers tail but I slept too long. I intended to warm my muscles back up and make my way to her home but found I was now stuck in the eye of the storm. I stretched my stiff limbs out treading through the snow in silence.

The world was blinding and getting darker but at the same time I knew my eyes were adjusting and in a few more moments it would be lit up once more attuned to me. The other animals that skulked along in the shadows of night were too gifted with the sight of daylight. The only peace we got was when we slept. It was hard to track the scent of her home. It would come and go with the fits of the wind. I used instinct. I used my internal compass to direct me to the north where I knew they would be. The scent of burning fat struck my nose and I followed. Only the two legged creatures were able to make fire.

Something caught my scent. The oil from its skin made my stomach stand to attention. I knew that greasy smell---chicken. What was a chicken doing out here? There was no such thing as a wild one, the closest was a turkey. But chickens had a more…distinct smell. Two legs kept them behind high fences or little wires to keep us from happily picking off each plump body like a buffet. Then I heard it. They have this sound that’s equally idiotic and always frightened. Chickens were afraid of everything, even there shadows. But those ones with the red atop their heads and were taller were the mean bastards. I remember one chasing away pecking at a springlings hide as he yelped and tried to outrun it. But a huntress leapt upon its back as it was distracted and broke its squabbling neck.

I could feel my mouth salivating. After my little rabbit lunch I was ready for another small thing to tide me over till midnight. It was darting away from something, when I saw the bright spot of red I knew it was my girl. Was she just as hungry as I was? How did she find a wild chicken and I lived here all my life and never once found one? She was speaking an odd language to it but the thing only had one goal in mind and that was freezing to death out here. Well if she wasn’t going to pounce and use her teeth then I would happily snatch this prize from her. She could eat the leaves she sometimes plucked from the earth. I was too worried when I scooped it up and snapped its neck. I heard its scream on the wind and got to work cleaning off the more annoying feathers that liked to hide the meaty prize. I found it with a few more pulls and savored the fat and blood running over my tongue. I looked up to see her playing in the snow but I had to let her know that this was my meal I hunted so she would have to wait until I was full enough to give her the rest.

The next time I looked up she was gone but I saw the marks in the snow of where she had been. I licked my muzzle as I ran after. Maybe she wanted to play a game? Or perhaps I could help her take down something more her size to eat. Then I saw the large bright flapping of the strange cloth she wore and excitedly pursued. I felt like I was reverting to a pup again and I wondered what would happen if I bit into the folds and yanked. Would my girl play in the snow with me? Go for a run?

Before I could reach her I heard the thunder, I cringed knowing the sound and then I felt the pain. I let out a yelp. Everything went blurry and my leg stopped working. I drowned in melting snow, I couldn’t take breaths without inhaling its cold. There were black bugs in my sights. Everything was flickering. I heard the strange language, smelt a large male, and knew if I moved another painful boom would disable me forever. I watched many springs ago deer fall to the power of that sound and saw the life fade from their tearful eye, smelt their soul slip away, knew their body would join the earth. This was how the two legs hunted. They didn’t have packs. It was always one two leg, one long stick, one stone that smelt of fire and death.

Now that same stench invaded my nose and I felt the stick touch my head. I waited for the boom to come. But she was here…I smelt her. I closed my eyes, bent my ear that wasn’t trapped under the snow to the side and took in that wonderful floral scent. It wasn’t a bad way to go out if I could forever run in a field of flowers with that scent. Forever. Then the stick wasn’t touching me and a weight was on my chest. It was suddenly warmer than a moment ago. It was almost too hot and cold…I faded.

I awoke with the choking smell of flames, coals, wood, bread, meat, and…flowers. I smelt my wound, there was a giant white arm wrapped around me and when I tried to work my legs they screamed in protest. I wanted to panic but before I could I remembered where I was. I knew this smell. The night before I could sense it on the other side of the flat wood but now I was…actually inside and I knew outside was my home. There was a soft sigh. I perked up listening to a faint heartbeat behind me and saw her face. She was so close. I started a new technique. Use your hips instead of your aching legs, and when I got the worst part up the rest was easy to follow. I limped over to the large strange thing she was sleeping upon and took a second to sniff it. She was furry now or rather wrapped up in different furs. I buried my nose in her hair, most of her aroma was here. She moved, I took two steps back but stayed in her line of sight. She was fluttering her eyes and then I saw that she knew I was here.

She was giving me the same look when she was in the snow after I stole the chicken away from her. If she thought I was going to hurt her I didn’t think I was capable of doing that even on a good day. When I moved my leg I didn’t feel the small biting thing move around inside. Did she make it disappear? Is that why this white arm was around me? Just standing was already wearing me out so I slid to my haunches painfully and collapsed still having enough strength to keep my head and neck erect. The furs were falling away and she was slowly easing out of the chair on her hands and knees. If she wanted to play this was the absolute wrong time. I was bit in the side by the thunder stick and now my muscles barked every time I moved. But if she wanted to play I suppose I could offer a paw that could swipe at her face and push her down. I got to my feet and she stilled. I could see her peeking over the thing she was resting on and see her limbs beneath it.

I went around the object and came nose to nose with her. I gave my tail a halfhearted sway and waited for her command. Still she gawked at me with those wide honey dipped eyes, her heart beating in her chest like a hummingbirds wing, and the stench of fear was overtaking her floral pheromones. I could smell salt and water on her face. I licked it away and suddenly she was squeaking and squirming like I got her by the neck and snapped her bones. For a second, I thought I had done just that until I saw her scramble away swiping at her face. She did taste good but I didn’t want to see her body still and wait to smell her soul float away.

The two legs. If I spoke in my language she would never understand. I thought of my mother. I dug deep inside. It felt like a silent bird unfurling its wings and I remembered. I needed to. The same images came back to me in sleep but this one was stored that I could access in the day time. So I dug it out from my brain and put it to use. Two legs. That’s what I needed, then the language barrier would be broken. The more I put that word to shape the easier it came to me in form. I heard my bones crack, the long legs I was used to become a fraction of the extension I used in my forearm. The wound painfully abided to the shifting of fur and skin and I felt the nakedness that I once witnessed as a pup. Pain shed from my ligaments and when I looked down I was on just that.

She was now standing in front of me but I watched as her eyes rolled to the back of her head and her body fell to the floor. I caught her with both my hands. Two large human hands that cradled the fragile skull of the fallen girl, not cracked it like an egg shell. I could touch her. I could feel her. Though my senses were a bit duller than they had been before, I still knew her scent. She looked like a hapless rabbit playing possum but I knew by the way her eyes had rolled that she really did faint. She was lucky I had been there in time to catch her, I had hoped to let my bones settle to their new arrangement but she was going down fast and hard and I needed to react without second thought. This was my second time taking on this form and it still felt unnatural after all this time. Like wearing the wrong fur that was a size too large.

As the weight of her head cradled against my palms I realized she was a lot lighter than I expected. Two leggers seemed to always have this girth about them that would solidify them to their place even as you rolled under their feet to knock them down. I scrunched my nose. Something felt damp beneath the bones of my knees. This wool thing was wet? I gingerly picked her form up planting her down on the thing she had been sleeping upon and she sank in the mold of it like it was made to be built around her. Now that I felt it with new human fingers I explored the length of it pressing down and surprised to feel it was plush. Like sleeping atop another animal.

I flexed my fingers. Before anything else would be put to work, I needed to reconnect my nerves with this forms and that meant stretching, flexing, and limping the best I could. I looked down at my bare waist, the arms turned to bans and loosened but didn’t release themselves from my hips. I pressed the pad of my finger to the sore spot and winced as it came away sore and bloody. Red bled through the white and I began to get nervous. Usually I could lick my wounds but I wasn’t the one who put this thing on me and therefore didn’t want to risk moving it.

After a long while of getting used to these joints I looked around closer waiting for her to wake. Nothing came of just sitting for hours and hoping to see her lashes open. And another storm was beginning to mount. It felt very odd to be in here sheltered from it than being outside somewhere still feeling its effects. It also felt odd not to have a tail. The moon began its rise and that’s when I heard her breathing begin to ebb like a stone disturbing the surface of water. Moments later her sunset eyes were on me, and once again they were wide with fear and confusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you ever want to know what my little lady Lee (Lily) looks like all you need to do is go to Insta because I draw her alot (Valkayray) enjoy this chapter *tips hat* and yes the second part is usually in the point of view of the wolf.


	3. The Bath

My hearth was warm and it made me thankful to the Saints and Gods that Rika had helped me stash a bountiful amount of wood in the summertime. We learned two winters ago how merciless it could be and even if we had gotten a peaceful nonthreatening one to separate us from the time before it was still a lesson we all learned come the next. Stew was beginning to make my teeth feel on edge so I sought different methods of eating. I went to the cold basement where my stockpiles of greenery awaited my crafty hands to pluck at the stashes and turn them into something more. I chose a salad peppering in bits of bacon the butcher gave me during a delivery a week ago. I had made sure the strips were thawed before I baked them in my brick over on the second ledge so I never contaminated raw foods with cooked ones. I made sure to scrub the ledges clean after every use and raked over ashy coals to reinvigorate the fire whenever I would open the vent to let the flames in.

I plucked fermented flower petals and dropped them into the surface of my tea. I settled into my chair flopping over the furs and letting the angry burn of the ceramic mug rest upon the top layer of blanket I had on. I hummed and listened to the wind harshly curl its fingers to my windows rattling the shutters and glass panes. I propped a book on my knee opposite of the tea that would threaten to spill over on the delicately thin pages. But then I smelt rot. It was so pungent that it made me gag. I looked into my cup, dead bugs were floating belly up on the surface. I threw the glass to the corner of the room and watched it shatter and spill. Then I looked to the salad which I was going to gobble up in a moments more time and it was crawling with maggots. The greens was rotted brown and the bacon was spoiled and no longer reddish brown. I held my mouth and looked to the open door of my brick oven. I didn’t remember baking a loaf of bread yet there it was rotting yeast and deflated. I heard the buzzing of flies as they nibbled on the spoils they could salvage.

Then the fire turned green and my home illuminated in a wicked emerald hue. The walls of my foundation began collapsing, the glaze on the wood cracked and crumbled, the mortar splattered away and I was buried alive. The wind was choking the life from me. I screamed but choked on the debris. Then there was yellow eyes glaring at me, his wolfish grin stretched to the crinkles of his eyes and he opened his large jaws ready to swallow me whole. I screamed again but as he chewed my bones I heard everyone who didn’t lift a finger to help me laugh and cheer.

I awoke with a jolt and looked at a naked man gawking at me in the very same room I was occupying. In fact---this was my house. No rotting food, no low lighting or wicked fire. For that I was thankful and yet here he still stood. I remember yellow eyes being nose to nose with me and when I was ready to run he was back nose to nose with me and then I witnessed….what did I witness? It wasn’t possible. I was stuck in a never ending nightmare. I watched as he shifted from monster to man and my brain couldn’t possibly conceive what it was seeing. The wound was still in the same spot and yet I listened as the bones crunched and the fur melted away and he was…a man! Then I saw black and now here I was again staring at the same man I…this was maddening. This was madness!

I seized my chance to run from the room to my bed chamber where I climbed out the window after three attempts to lift the frozen frost from its frame and climbed like a loon outside into the pile of snow packed against the siding of my home. Then his face was in the window, his hands clasped on the sill, and his eyes wild and worried. I think…he was worried about me? No! What had just happened should make him feel all the confusion and terror I was feeling. The cold rushed to me freezing all my limbs and I felt like I was going to become the first ever humansicle The fact he wasn’t saying anything wasn’t helping my delusion. I fled to Rika’s house. It was across the way but in the storm it felt like an hour trek.

I reached his front porch my knuckles numb but looking to loose themselves upon the flat of his door. As they went to rap on it I felt large hands arrest the motion and then a scream was ready to soar from my stiff cords but another hand clasped over that as well. It was impossible to beat the squalls loud howling but I wasn’t unwilling to try to outmatch it. I thrashed about but found to no avail that as I pedaled my legs forward I was being dragged backward. My cries were muffled but I called out his name over and over trying to beat the wind. He feared I would be mauled by a wolf but instead I was being mauled by a man. I heard the door open and I was back within the confines of my home that was safe yesterday.

My heart was knocking against my chest I thought it was going to throw all my muscles into an uncontrollable spasm. I barely caught my breath when I tried to redo my plan and head for my room but felt large arms pin my own to my sides and a moment later I was thrust into my chair. I faced him and before I could rise his arms gripped the little seats arms and his body obstructed my escape. I was pinned to my place and was shaking from the weather and from my frayed nerves. I shook my head at him. This had to be yellow eyes…the absence of the wolf and presence of man told me the only logical explanation was that he had morphed into…this thing that trapped her in her seat. She went to speak but he held up one of his gigantic hands to my face letting any protests that were about to come out die on my lips. I heard him clear his throat and saw then that despite his irritation with me, he was a bit pale and he was struggling to keep his posture erect. His words scraped out in guttural steely tone gruffly grate against my ears. I was taken aback by how deep it was, and yet it wasn’t surprising. If this was what a wolf sounded like it was pretty much a dead match to what I could ever dream up. But his words were broken up.

“Stay. Do not, afraid. Not hurt she. But am, bleed.” He motioned to the gauze which was starting to unravel and was a deep crimson. I froze as her eyes caught sight of it. The last of his will slipped away and he leaned heavily on her ottoman. I wanted to run, I even looked to the door, but---if this was yellow eyes, and he hadn’t hurt me yet---maybe he spoke the truth. I went to the door watching him become crestfallen and all hope drained from his face. I shut the door banning any more snow and cold from coming in latching it and disappeared in a whisk to my room to do the same of the window.

I gathered up her basket where I kept my medical supplies and got to work. A few stitches were torn. I gathered from the blood trail on my sill it snagged open when he crawled out to pursue me. He overexerted himself just to drag me back here---that mustn’t have been easy. I gave him props for having such a resolve to keep him on his feet and not passing out from the pain. I hadn’t looked at him but knew he was watching me. I also knew that if I spoke my words would quiver and waver before a sob bubbled to the surface. I was frightened yes---but helping yellow eyes took over precedence before my buzzing mind could fathom to process him answering my questions. As my own thoughts snagged on that bit of thinking, the string I cut too snagged and his muscles coiled and tensed and he let out a sucking hiss between his teeth.

“I-I’m sorry!” I put an alcohol soaked rag against the gaping wound which teared a red streak and subdued it before it could stain my wood flooring. “You can understand me?” I looked up at him through my lashes trying to distract herself from how close I was to this naked man’s penis. “I’m going to draw a hot bath, I want you to soak in it with this wound. Get your skin and bones nice and warm and relaxed and howl---holler! For me when you’re done.” I could see the tug of his lip curl in an amused smirk. Bastard I thought before I disappeared once more to the bathing room drawing his bath and letting the flames boil the water. I kept a watchful eye on the temperature and shut it off knowing it would need to cool for a bit before it would allow an occupant.

How could I face yellow eyes in that form? I was still convinced this was all some maddening dream. Animals didn’t take human form and talk. People didn’t turn into animals. Yet yellow eyes did do just that.

I helped him to his bath holding his arm as he submerged into the tub careful not to rove over any soft or taut part on his body and I listened to all his held breath exhale with a deep groan. I was ready to go when he snatched my wrist fastening me to my place.

“No, leave. Stay.” I waited for him to let go but I had an inkling he wouldn’t concede until I did and I pulled the large bar stool from the corner of the room over to the large rise of the outer edge. I kept myself busy gathering a cloth and handing it to him. He looked at it and then picked up its drooping form giving it a deep sniff then letting it go and looking at me like I had two heads. I rolled my eyes.

“You use it to wipe yourself down.”

“Use tongue. You.” My cheeks burned red hot and I gaped at him until I realized that was the animal way.

“No! This is like a tongue. You get it wet and it get the dirt and grime just the same. I am not doing that.” He took hold of it and I let it go as it flopped against the side of his fist. He let his arm stay in the same position of our exchange and I raised a brow.

“Now you scrub your body.” He looked at himself then at me. I rubbed my aching hands over my face. It was like dealing with the little ones yet this was a full grown burly man. I took the rag dipping it into his bath water bringing it into contact with his skin and he flinched. “I’m just wiping. Nothing more. I can’t harm you with a cloth.”

He held his neck with his thick fingers and I once more regarded the heavens with an eye roll. I began working the patches of ice in the creases of his muscle and distracted myself in my mind by humming and thinking of a tune as I mechanically went to work. I could feel through the thin cloth certain spots when his muscles would coil and I wondered if this dolt of a rock actually got ticklish. I wiped all the grim I could and when I got to his hands flossing between the web of his fingers with my own and the cloth in between I slowed just a bit. Those gold eyes were watching every move I made and I tried not to feel the heat rise into my cheeks. I swallowed hard looking down at these miniature barges attached to his wrist bone. His fingers flexed at times and I just couldn’t believe the scale of them compared to my own.

I never truly stood close enough to observe a man for I was always scuffling about doing my duty. I had a few suitors come gallivanting at my door in hopes of domesticating me to be their wife but---I never got close or intimate with anyone other than my neighbor Rika and even then we were nothing more than good friends. I remember when both our thing rectangular frames began changing and we could no longer bathe in the creek or pond together or even swim to stave off the sweltering heat. His chest bloated like a hard balloon or steel chest plate beneath his skin and muscles and veins began bulging each summer her worked physical labor. I had begun my bleeding, became shapely, and grew well…breasts. While he stayed like a box I was expected to tame my frame with a corset and cover my cleavage when necessary. I was meant to be an upside down triangle from the waist up. My legs grew long while he grew tall but I never stopped to observe him on a closer spectrum.

Now that I had a willing participant I couldn’t help explore that glaring differences in male and female anatomy. They were built like locomotives and we were built like flowers. I blinked coming out of my drunken gawking and resumed attacking the dirt from the grounds of his skin. His skin had a hue as though he spent all his days in the sun but because of the lack of sunlight it took on a paler tone. He motioned to the room.

“Not seen colors. Long time.” I blinked. If he indeed was a wolf before it made sense given their mainly colorblind.

“Do you like colors of do you prefer monotone colors?”

“Colors.” He said without hesitation. I worked on the dirt beneath his nails working to get the white arches to show once more.

“I’m sorry Rika shot you.”

“Shot?” I pointed to his wound with a scowl. He looked down at the pink and brown water before looking back up at me. “The pain.”

“Yes. I got the bullet out. Now we just need the wound to close.” He was making my thoughts stir and I wanted to ask him so much more but let him keep the pace of the conversation. With the little work of the words he knew I doubted he would be able to go into details regarding everything.

I I got to his toes and when felt his flesh was pink and dirt free I ordered him to carefully stand to receive a towel. I pulled him to the hearth in my room and got the fire started and running while I got to work on getting him clothes. He watched me squirrel about the room gathering the medical basket and going through a cedar closet that held my fathers collection of clothing. After he passed I couldn’t find the courage to part with any articles. I kept them pressed and bug free for the five years since his departure in this world. I hoped they were both at least somewhat the same height. I ordered him on the rug on his side so I could put salve and ointment after neatly stitching the flesh closed. He tensed and worked through the pain until I was done wrapping him in gauze. I measured the shirt against his elongated body and told him to put it on as well as the pants.

“No want.”

“It will make me feel better.”

“Better nude.”

“It is not.”

“Not constrict.”

I ran my hands over my face a second time that night and went to work on warming milk with honey and working on the salted meat into something edible for him. I doubted he would enjoy greens and so I fashioned him salted pork with a potato and butter bringing it to him and setting it on the small circular table by the fire. He struggled to get into the chair wincing every movement.

“Sorry you keep having to irritate the wound.”

“What is?”

“Your wound.” He shook his head and motioned to the dead thing on his plate.

“Oh, that’s pork. Pig.”

“Where is rest?”

“The rest of the pig?”

“Yes.”

“In parts frozen.” He scrunched his nose looking at me funny. “We humans eat out food cooked and not raw.”

“Humans.”

“Yes, that is what we’re called. What did you call us?”

“Two legs.” Now it was my turn to scrunch my nose at him. “Mother called all hairless squirrels.” I suppressed my laugh thinking better of insulting him and sat on the beds edge.

“Try it. It’s been cooked over the fire and is warm.” Now his eyes downcast onto the plate and he inspected a piece with his fingers. He licked a digit inspecting the taste and then bit hungrily into it. The way he chewed brought me back to my escaped fowl.

“You ate one of my chickens.” He glanced up startled then looked slightly ashamed. He slant his eyes to the corner of the room but I didn’t see him tense with any regret.

“Was dead anyway.”

“Not if I could get her.” The days surprises were wearing me down, exhaustion was weighing heavily on me and I just wanted to cocoon under the covers and hibernate like the bears in November. Maybe then I could shirk off this nightmare. But the more I fought with this the more disconnected I became in the face of reality. He gulped down the contents of the milk and honey and leaned back with a content sigh.

“Careful, I don’t know if you’re going to fall back in the chair or collapse it. It was tailored to my frame not yours.” He tested the strength rocking back on his heels forgetting momentarily that he still had a stitched wound the size of his thumb on the upper portion of his leg.

“You can sleep on my bed tonight. I’m just as content sleeping in my chair.”

“Bed?”

“Yes the thing I’m sitting on. And I want you laying on the opposite hip and try not to move around.”

He crept over and I stood to give him access. He ran his palms over the soft coverlet of fur.

“What animal is this?” He seemed to be picking up more words as we spoke. A fast learner. I turned over the corner showing him the top.

“Bear. Three with the same color fur stitched together carefully. There’s a pocket where weighted feathers of goose were stitched into the underbelly to keep the feathers and warmth in. That look of disgust surfaced again. “It isn’t as if we experiment with the animals you know. We take what we need for necessity. It’s the comforter, beneath are what we call sheets. In case we need to pile layers on during chilly nights.” His eyes glazed over to the fire then he felt the pillows.

“You lay your head on it.” I demonstrated resting my heavy crown atop the one closest to the wall. He mimicked my action and I saw him visibly relax as his body settled into the weight of the mattress.

“I know of dirt and snow. Sometimes leaves, soft grass. Never this. Too odd.” I smiled imagining him in his other form climbing atop a pile of geese and sleeping. If I was to be true to my word I needed to get up now before my own bones settled and my muscles relaxed. My joints protested as I rose but once more felt the familiar steel trap grip on my wrist.

“Stay.”

“I cannot.”

“Stay.” I watched the honeycomb spheres levelly gaze into mine and being to weary from exhaustion to protest any longer I melted back into my side facing him and slowly letting my eyes linger on the flames behind him. And then I sunk into the mattress and was swallowed by the dark.

I watched her body let its full weight be held by the thing she called a bed. It had been years since I understood and spoke their tongue and at times she was speaking a little too fast but I matched her pace to the best of my ability. The human mind was coming back to me. When I was in one form the other slept and when that side slept only brief glances of the other glimpsed through. I still felt the ache to run through the snow, hunt, and sleep beneath the brittle breath of the trees. But being like this was far more comforting than the days I was alone. Here threats meant I didn’t have to be attuned to every sound that would alert me awake to danger. Even if it was as simple as a squirrel scampering across the foliage. I could relax. I didn’t have to worry about succumbing to the wilderness if I couldn’t find a warm pocket of snow to bury under or an unoccupied cave. So these places were homes. Not piles of sticks.

They did not have to hunt for every meal, for it was stocked somewhere within the home. They did not have to worry about being caught in Mother Nature’s tantrums for as much as the storm outside raged it could not slip through. They didn’t need to worry about being cold because they had fires and furs. She called herself human. That was what this form was called. Human. I said the word over and over in my mind liking the way it sounded primal. I remembered when mother would change her form into one, enter among them like a thief in the night, mimicked their movements and way of talking and came back with meals. She taught us lycanthrope, the skin changers how to shift forms in the most dire of needs. She taught us the language. She said we would forget most of it when we were once more wolves. And it was true. I was beginning to watch the language come back to mind after spending so many years in the dark and on instinct and sense alone.

I watched as she had bathed me. She was looking at me fascinated. A mirror to what I had done the night before sniffing the perimeter of her home. She stirred briefly in her sleep but her chest feel in deep synchronizations. When she ran out of the room and out the window I thought she was going to hurt herself. But I couldn’t just let her alert her kind that a skin walker was among her own kind. I had to make her understand that I didn’t want to kill her. I felt a tear in my side. I ignored the bubbling welt of red in my side and I limped through the blinding snow watching her struggle just the same as me until we reached the other side of the house. She was ready to damn the consequences and I needed to make her understand. I knew she’d fight but we needed shelter and safety.

But in the water---I saw the look. The same one she gave me when she watched me pass through the forest. It was a complete accident. He meant to go unseen on the scent of a wolf that threatened to move in on his territory three winters ago and his careless footing caused a branch to snap drawing the attention of someone sitting outside being as equally as stealthy. He observed her and she regarded him and he knew then he couldn’t deny being spotted. He waited for the creature to raise her thunder stick and waited for the pain to come but instead she lift something very small like a twig of her own and waved it over a rectangular object propped in her lap. Since she was in my territory I figured she would be my responsibility and therefore I dubbed her my girl. I pressed on determined to rid my wood of that rogue.

Now we were so close. She was here, mere foot spans from me. I was going to press my muzzle to my face but then I remembered what I was. My fingers silently snaked their way over erasing the gap between us. All the nerves in my fingertips were alight like the fire behind my back. I felt more with these hands than the callous paws I was born with. I stroked my thumb over the pale pink flesh of her bottom lip seeing the brief flash of white teeth. But hers weren’t menacing. They could never be a threat. What did mother say? Human’s rituals are far more complex than the animal kingdoms. A flash of teeth is called a smile. But did she somehow know my code? She never flashed her pearly whites whenever we regarded one another’s presence. I think I would like to see her smile, not the thin one she was always showing me.

Her lips were softer than any flower petal I pressed my nose to. Softer than the silt of sand I found in my favorite bathing spot. Softer than any gentle warm breeze that tussled my fur in the summer solstice. I traced the top bow of her lip watching them part slightly. I felt the heat of her breath. My fingers climbed higher. Her cheeks were softer still. I followed the line of her nose with my finger to the curves of her lashes fanned upon her cheek and I imagined her like this beneath the juniper tree before the cold weather settled in. I felt the soft brow lining the sharp edge above her eye and fanned my fingers through the feathery hair. Now I understood why she had be entranced while looking at my palm. She didn’t study the curves like I did but I felt had she been granted permission she might have. I watched her now and I thought of the doe dozing in the high zenith of the sun. Her black lashes fanning her cheeks just the same, and her soft bed upon the blossoms and tall grass fanned around her.

What had been the word mother used to regard the way one felt when gazing down the valley of the high peaks of the mountains when the wild flowers speckled all across the shoulder of the sanctuary? Where all races of animals came to graze and laze during the hottest part of the long year? Beautiful. That’s what she said. When that pivotal moment where the scales of prey and predator meet in the middle of understanding and all bellies are full and none fight for scraps and seek refuge in the crater filled with tall grass, refreshingly cool puddles of water, wild flowers, and sleeping beasts. That is what this human was. Is.

Beautiful.


	4. The Woodsman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was short.

My hunger brought me out of my comatose state. It raged like a caged animal clawing, gnawing, and fluttering at my stomach with angry beating wings. When my gut sank like a stone and burned against my lining I came alive returning to my senses only when I felt large hands upon my shoulders. For a heart startling moment I thought about the wild animal I allowed to take temporary residence in my stead. I thought it was tearing my flesh apart until I felt the form with my own hands and peered into those multicolored spheres of Rika.

“Easy, easy, be still…where is the beast?” I could hear the worry in his tone and as I was about to point out its location I recalled the night before or rather two nights when it had taken the shape of a man. With the same wound location as the wolf, and he had spoken, I bathed him, dressed the wound again, and he begged me to stay beside him. I found air where his form had been, my fingers merely hovering in the air. It seemed so long ago now. I remember briefly waking up once when I felt his body shift and then pause. My mind was still in an exhausted state but a flash of thought came to me that perhaps he had meant to roll to his other side but was forced to remember to keep off it so he had merely shifted readjusting his limbs. I felt the fires keen sting and wanted to roll out of bed to turn the vents slats sideways to cut off air and bring the temperature down, but it was his unnatural body heat that was the issue.

I turned my attention back to Rika who still had his hands fastened to my shoulders. I saw he stole glances while I was distracted scanning my body for any signs of fatal injuries. I swallowed hard brushing the damp hair from my forehead and getting to my feet setting the furs aside.

“Did you see it when you came in?” He shook his head at my question and a white flash of silver crept up my spine.

It would have been so easy to call it a feverish dream that I had made up for some silly school girl fantasy. But he had asked about a beast, and so my thoughts were suddenly a little more hopeful that perhaps I had dreamt him turning to a man. I moved with determination to gather my coat and investigate the cracks and corners of my sanctuary for the thing. Whatever it may be. But when I touched him he was made of flesh, his veins pulsated with blood, I explored the willowy fingers attached to mountainous knuckles. I saw the familiarity in his yellow eyes when we were but a few feet from one another.

Rika was behind me moving as fast as I that if I stopped he would crash into me. “I didn’t see it when I came over to check on you the night before.”

“What do you mean?” I was sure he was still next to me hours ago… “You just came into my home without my say so?” He shuffled his footing looking to the corner of my room instead of my eyes. I watched the red tinge creep against his fair skin.

“I was going to check on you after I had left you but then that storm came about and it was hard to even find the direction of your stead. So I waited until the sun was awake and the snow passed to come to you. You were sleeping so peacefully I wondered if you caught fever from being frightened and out in the squall the other evening.” I cocked my head to the side. So I was alone when he checked on me suddenly? But I too had tossed and turned and caught glimpses of him when I wasn’t settling back down.

“You’re certain?”

“Certain? I was afraid I would find you in bloody pieces when I intruded. But I looked high and low and found nothing.”

“There weren’t even prints outside my porch?”

“None. Has your fever subsided?”

“I didn’t have a fever?”

“Then you were purposely being idle for two days?” his brow raised questioning my character. I felt my back straighten and planted my hands on my hips.

“After patching up a creature that could bite off my limbs at any moment, chased my scatterbrained chickens in a squall, and ran an errand that same afternoon, I think I am entitled to let the circulation in my feet come back to them.” He said nothing more and took a seat at my dining table.

“Well then I shall test you on your newfound endurance. You will gladly repay my kindness by making me a hearty breakfast.”

“I think not. I have chores to get to.”

“And you will get to them after you fulfill my request. Did I mention I was worried ill the entire time I checked on you? You should have requested something just as dangerous and fetched me along to get you a viper so that it may slink about your floor and surprise you with poison upon its bite.”

“Yes, yes I chose to let my chores pile themselves. But clearly the creature is no longer here.”

“Regardless---the beast didn’t just spring up on two legs and let itself out the door.” I slid my hand over my mouth. It was entirely possible he did just that. I had a list of things to do before I set out to find what had happened to yellow eyes and it started with a rushed breakfast.

My lungs were seizing at the pinprick of the cold each pant I took. The taste of fresh blood still lacquered over the bumps of my tongue. Copper filled my senses. My bite was still as powerful as I remembered and I was grateful my jaw never locked during the hunt. I had become so relaxed in human skin that I itched to be back in the wilderness. To work all my muscles. But I was still limited in my movement. I felt the stitches protest whenever the hackles on my hind legs fought the tension to run. As I overextended my bones and brought back the familiar shape to them they almost tore. There would be no running for me. Only a strong limp and at my best a semi-fast pace.

I knew I would need to be back at my girls hearth before the next storm threatened to bare its teeth. It would come before the night was over. All the animals sensed the barometric pressure rapidly drop and I was ashamed to yearn to be out of the wilderness and back under the furs. Next to her. He wanted to hunt so badly his teeth hurt. After gorging on a fat turkey I took the most intricately patterned feather between my jaws and made sure not to damage or put a depression on it. I tasted what it was like to be human and she made it easy to fall into such a state but I needed to keep away from that trap. If I lingered I feared I would turn my back on my true ways. That I would never rove the mountains, breath its untouched air, drink from the purest rainwater pools.

But there was a tear in me. Not because of the literal one in my hind leg, but the one I felt to be by her side. I barely had moments when the unlatching of the door drew me to my feet. I knew an unwelcome face would come into this room and instinct urged me once more out her window. I changed my form and when I was far enough away I waited until I watched the male emerge within ten flicks of a badger’s tail. He retreated to his own hut and I waited until I was certain it was safe to go back to her home.

On a faint wind I caught the scent of a quail about three meters to the east. I knew the humans would be traipsing about looking for fresh meat before the next storms spell. I knew they would carry the long sticks and I didn’t need any more holes put through me. I saw a flash of brown glide between the peaks of the trees. As I continued with my limp I listened to the sitka deer pause and ponder whether it should run from such a pathetic creature. I felt foolish carrying a feather in my jaws but meant it not as a present for him.

I sent Rika away with a pickled jar of fresh peaches from the trees that dropped them fresh during the summer solstice. I got to work adding the sugar and syrup storing whatever fruit I didn’t consume to my cellar. I knew of his fondness for the sweet treat so before he could rope me into more conversation and forsake his own chores. With a slap on his back and a jar of my fermented fruit I hauled him off his feet and chided him for neglecting his work for the day.

I hurried through my list. I had fed the chickens, collected their eggs, washed them in my basin, prepared them in sixes, collected soft hay to pack into the bottom of the basket and placed the white chests gingerly into their places, and set out to distribute them to my normal buyers who would be eager to have them for the morrow’s breakfast. I pulled on my cloak sighing against the peg by the fire and I relished in its weighted warmth as I set out.

By the time I got back I had passed the sundial in the center square by the small spring fountain and knew it would be dark in three more hours. But because it was the winter solstice I knew that the days were far shorter and that gave me no more room than an hour until dark, and sometime during my walks the temperature became frigid. I set fresh water and seed in the coop making sure the hutch was locked up tight and the slat to the high window was shut and secured. I knotted thick rope to the exposed section and made sure it was good and sturdy before retiring back inside. Rika was still on about yellow eyes but I merely shrugged and said the animal escaped there would be no need to worry over a lose injured animal.

I put on boiling water and had taken a bath that melted all the clinging frost out of my bones. The snow came down in fat wet flakes that stuck to my lashes and as I felt the weight press down atop my head, I swiped a hand to brush it away and came away with a wet hand. Heavy snow was worrisome. It meant it would pile and could pile dangerously against ones doors making it impossible to escape. When this sort of snow accumulated neighbors vowed to keep an eye on one another’s doors and if need be they would aid them in scooping out a sizable divot for the other to push their door through just enough to slip one’s body out.

I made sure I stopped at the butchers shop before my trek back to the stead taking the wrapped stringed packages of salted pork, steak, and chicken pressing the heavy contents into my basket and exchanging thanks and coin for his generous stockpile. The same edge was within the others for they too were clamoring to buy up his fresh dangling frozen limbs and parts worried another tempest came from the mountains.

I decided to withhold on the meat for another night and stuck to brewing a thick broth and plump noodles with chicken bones steeping the marrow into the soup as well as sheered pieces of the fresh chicken the butcher gave me. I even added in chopped carrots and diced celery. The strong aroma wafted to the tub and I took it in reveling in my skill of cooking. Mother was keen I learn how to make anything out of the ingredients that were ready and available. Sometimes bigger projects would be out of the question and so you worked with what you had in the pantry. She said those days were called desperation days and a trick that would come in handy when ones belly was empty and one could not stroll to the market or have enough coin.

Luckily mother and father left a large dowry for me upon their passing and each silver circle went to the greedy taxes of the village council. I didn’t complain. It was enough to keep me in my home and the job I took was enough to keep my cabinets well stocked as well as my cellar full of meat. Mother prepared me for the life of a pauper regardless. I thanked my Saints and Gods every night for my small fortunes and was glad when she taught me all manners or recipes. If I had not been hands on the trade would have faded from my memory and stayed on the pages of the book she wrote out for me. But those all nighters where we perfected crumbling cakes, doughy bread, and tart tarts was worth the insomnia I felt the following day. I remember Rika trying to coax me into opening my own bakery but when I refused he said nothing more on the subject. I never intended to stay solely tethered to this village even if the bones and skin of the home I grew up in were still standing.

I dreamed of the day I had enough coin to employ carpenters to create a cabin somewhere in the heart of the forest. I scarcely shared that dream but when I pitched it to Mr. Dreskell he feigned the option that a young woman shouldn’t live without the strong arms of a man to keep her hearth warm and be so far away that no neighbor could dig me out of a storm or get to the grocers in time for food.

Once more I heard the angry hiss of flames as the broth bubbled over and when I dragged myself out of my lukewarm bath finding a robe I rushed to the hearth pulling the pot away from the flames. I tried putting together the pieces of my apparent two gone days and all I remembered was the heavy heated weight of yellow eyes next to me. Rika had said he stole chances to come in and keep an eye on me yet I distinctly remember yellow eyes being next to me. His leg wasn’t completely lame and so I made the assumption he got up in and out from under the furs at his behest.

I grabbed one of my wooden bowls ready to ladle in a hearty portion but a chilled breeze threatened to expose my legs fluttering the flap of my robe up. I shuttered and turned assuming it was Rika entering without so much as a knock. I would chide his ear off and establish our agreement to enter ones property with at least that curtesy but I found yellow eyes back in human form gawking at me, a feather betwixt his forefinger and thumb. My mouth gaped open and I couldn’t find the appropriate response to give to him. I could see more of his wound had opened and doused the bandages with a coin sized imprint but it also was discolored to a dirty white which I gathered was from being damp.

“Where were you?!” My voice pitched higher than I wanted it but I was slightly irate with his vanishing act. I still felt responsible for him and when he left without a word I suspected I wouldn’t see him again. His inked hair was slightly disheveled and his skin was wet, still nude, and I saw the muscles beneath trembling. My eyes lowered to his feet and I found his back foot was still outside the door stamped against a pile of snow. I _tsked_ him dragging him inside by his arm and fastened the lock shut hurrying to shoo him into my chair and wrap the thick coil of furs I kept there for when I read and relaxed.

He held his hand in the air to avoid the feather being damaged and I felt his cheeks were as cold as death.

“This is for you.” He held the quill to my face obstructing my task to clamp the open bracket of furs closed around his chest. I plucked it from his fingers and sought answers in his expression. I saw a swell of pride in his cauldron eyes and startled. I was always used to the thick gold hues that looked through me and now they were as slated as the black sands of the fiord shores of Norway. Perhaps another thing he could control. Some small warmth fluttered in my chest but I was still angry with him leaving unannounced. But the gratification in his eyes wasn’t mine to douse so I turned over the quill taking in all the specks flecked against the brown waves against black. I felt the cockles of my heart soften just for the instant I could get out “It’s lovely.” And felt fire yank me back to the true matter at hand.

“But even so! You should’ve told me you were leaving. I assumed you just left and that was that. I was also worried you would succumb to your wounds and would find a hole to die in.” A sharp thick brow raised and he had the audacity to look at me like I was spinning silly tales. I planted my hands on my hips still feigning concern. “You should have said something.”

“That male from the other hut was coming in. I thought it better if I got myself gone instead of stayed around and endured questions.” I felt my own brow tick in frustration. True…but he could have just as easily slid under my bed or slipped into another room. However, Rika did express that he searched every nook in my house for signs of the wolf so perhaps it was the best course of action he could have taken. Furthermore…yellow eyes English seemed to stop being so broken up and come more fluently from his lips. I wondered how that was possible. But those billions of questions buzzing around in my mind like angry hornets still needed to be silent until this matter could be resolved.

“I suppose---“ A smirk crept upon his lips which made me internally pull back from being so close to the creature. He looked at me with a knowing and a wicked secret.

“How would it look to have a foreign man naked in your bed should he have caught us?” My cheeks burned crimson. I wanted to rip the blankets off him and take back my invitation for warmth. He leaned cockily against his bent knee letting the sharp elbow rest upon it and careened forward. I took two steps back and busied myself with getting two bowls of soup ready.

“I think he would have stabbed you to death, buried you in a shallow grave so the crows and foxes could feast on your flesh and meaty parts, then spent the better part of a month chiding me and barraging me with questions.” I saw the white teeth catch against the glint of the fire and I couldn’t help but notice how sharp his canines looked. “So where _did_ you go?”

“Are you concerned?”

“Of course I am. You got hurt and like I said I assumed the worst.”

“I went to get breakfast. I was starving and I didn’t want to wake you. You seemed to need the extra rest so I set out to reclaim my territory and look for food.”

I could still feel the burn on my cheeks and found my fingers carelessly scanning over the rim of a wooden bowl. The anger sapping away with every word he spoke. “Well thank you for letting me rest. I hadn’t realized just how exhausted I was until the burning subsided from my eyes and I awoke groggy in two days’ time.” He nodded.

I took a glass jar from one of the shelves scooping a handful of my pretty rocks I’ve found throughout the years of my exploration of the forest and gingerly scattered them to the bottle burying the hollow bone of the feather securing it in its place and setting the new craft upon the mantle of my fire where I could look upon it whenever I wished.

“Are you still hungry?”

“I’m usually famished.”

We ate in silence. Though, I would have preferred for her to speak even if it was to the point of her gabbing on like a hen into the night. The flavors of cooked meat rolled over my tongue. Though vegetables were not required in my diet, it was still odd to have such different blends come together to make something delicious. Mother had taught me the ways of using what the humans called utensils but I stole a glance to my girl to make sure I remembered I was holding it correctly and how what order I was to use it. Dip, sip, and swallow. Chew on the chunks when you caught them. I stifled a chuckle looking at the structure of these primitive things. I held a hot bowl and used a littler bowl with a handle to deliver the substance to my mouth. I craved raw meat but---humans had a way of sprinkling magic that had strong scents of the plant life that grew in my domain and making it into a wonderful array of edibility.

I stole another glance to the feather on the mantle watching the jagged wink of light that caught on the flickering flames light. I knew the same rocks were birthed inside a cave I often liked to take residence in during the more severe of storms. Bears never took to the crystal caves because any refraction of light sent a white flash of blindness to their beady little black eyes. Not only that but the energy in the cave was meant for more sick animals to sleep until healed. We knew now to disrupt the natural workings of its aura. I would have to take my girl there on a warmer day so she could pluck however many she liked. In this form I now saw the colors that peppered against the gleam of sparkling white. Amethyst. A rich soft and deep purple. It really was breathtaking. But there were also rocks I saw she had collected with a shiny surface filled with tiny bubbled craters. I never saw them littered against the forest floors.

“This is very good, thank you.”

“You need to stop switching forms. It’s not good for your injury.”

“I know. I hope you spoke to the male so he won’t disturb us.”

“I did indeed do just that. So now you either stay in that form or the other, but you can’t keep exhausting your bones by shifting to two entirely different anatomical structures.” She took a bite of a meaty chunk she fished from her bowl.

“I think I will stay in this form for now. It’s easier to communicate in.”

“Very well but you need to wear at least something that will cover your waist to your upper thighs.” Here she goes again trying to make me uncomfortable even more in this skin by constricting me in clothing and limiting my movements.

“Is there no alternative?” She looked like she was pondering something. She was looking at me but not into my eyes, rather she looked through me to something behind my shoulder. Then she spoke.

“A compromise then. The next time I check your bandages I made a makeshift undershorts for you with the bandage.”

“What are undershorts?”

“They are like pants but much shorter. But it will cover your…more vulnerable parts. And don’t go outside in that form you could get hypothermia.” I cocked my head. I wasn’t sure what that word meant but it sounded ugly.

“What does that mean?”

“Your toes will turns black and fall off and if the sickness spreads over your limb you could lose it.” Yep, ugly. But I nodded in agreement. No argument there. It was a hot pain at first but then my toes burned numb and pulsated with pain and brittle cold. I understood why humans wore those things that covered their feet. I just couldn’t comprehend why they were made to look like the feet of a bear. And yet the shape was all wrong. There were no pads or claws protruding from the pockets of a paw. And some smelt like strong salt and water.

I watched my girl fidget in her seat. She took to the little circular chair and propped it so her back was to the fire and a distance away from me. I knew she was ready to barrage me with her own questions.

“You wish to know my secrets?” Her head snapped from the dredges of her bowl and though there was nothing left in it, she had been moving the little bowl around with her fingers fixating on the bottom of it. I cocked my head at her accusingly. “Well?”

“Please.” She said breathlessly.


	5. Red Hands

Everything about her was soft. I never knew another surface could feel like velvet beneath my touch. I examined her pale fingers rotating her wrist so my lips brushed and glided over the smooth surface. How could such a lithe little thing be born to silky skin? I craved to sink my teeth into her creamy flesh imagining her taste. The aroma of her. She would not be the thing I wanted to tear to pieces. I set her limp wrist upon her side carefully placing it back in the same spot she had it. I watched the gentle fall and rise of her gleaming shoulder. There was a small wink of moonlight setting her skin to pale glittering diamonds when its light bathed down upon her. I saw the details of her spine and ached to stroll my fingers over each bone. The slip as I came to understand its definition and meaning, had a low dip in the back but not so low as to expose the arch of her back.

I tested her depth of slumber and when she had not stirred when I removed the weight of her hand upon her side and replaced it without so much as a stir I knew my next brazen attempt would go unnoticed. I rest my head on the inside of my forearm bucking my body closer in one smooth motion so the bed didn’t jostle. I waited for her heartbeat to flutter faster which meant she was waking but listened to the melody of its methodical thumping. As I pressed my lips to her shoulder I was taken aback by my previous thoughts. A creature that was born bare outweighed the softest newborn pup’s tuft of fuzz. This was a different sensation. Like drowning in the old spirits drapery and gladly allowing it. But tasting something was dangerous. One could get addicted. And that’s what had happened the moment I first came upon her scent.

I heard it. I had to still to listen more closely just in case I heard wrong. But it was there. The faint beating that quickened and then her muscles moved and I knew she was waking. I would be caught and reprimanded, probably tossed out by my ear. But her honey dipped eyes flowed with dark pools of tea as her head turned in defiance of the moons light. My own shadow took up half her face as I looked down at her. I was aware that I had sat up and was now watching her from the small perch I created for myself. My palm seemed to perspire against my head the longer she lingered her glare. I saw the exposed flesh of her throat and was tempted to bite down. To play with my food and see if I could make her squeak like an animal. I wondered what noises she would make.

She craned her head up towards me and for a moment I pictured her nose to press against mine and our foreheads touch under the watchful gaze of the moonlight but I felt something warmer. She pressed her lips to mine. I drank her in. She was honey wine. Sugar canes. She was the sweetest pollen of flower that only bloomed on the far rise of the mountainside forever fanning and growing within the sunlight. I was holding her. Grasping to ground myself back from the heavens. From the cosmos. She took me back to days of puphood when mother would read about the sun, the moon, and the stars, and a thing called galaxies and planets. If we were caught learning the practices of science the zealots would hang our heads from pikes. But the stories she illustrated were as if she were nonchalantly stroking her brush over the heavens painting a grander picture for two lowly pups who hadn’t the capacity for imagination. But she made it easy to picture. Just like my girl.

I demanded more. I deepened the kiss. I wanted more. I found my greedy fingers looking to fill the curves of her body. I wanted to see if her bottom fit to the shape of my palms. I never dreamed of my mate being a human woman. I envisioned another clad black female wolf like myself. I would know her when I looked upon her. But I was a rare breed and the last of my lycanthrope to proudly display the lineage of black. I gazed down on her barely giving her a second to draw in air before my mouth was upon hers again. On the rose petals that would never wither or break. Her fervor matched mine and I was suddenly on top of her, my arms wanting to wrap around her, fingers carve little purple blooms on her skin. Then something jumped through the window and hit me in the chest. We both jumped.

My eyes flew open and I found I was grasping a small circular pillow a little too eagerly. It took me a second to blink away the wonderful haze of the dream and I groaned wanting to cling to it and finish the ending. But here my girl was with her hands on her hips and a scowl on those lips that were just on mine moments ago. For a small sliver of time I thought about erasing that sour look and fulfilling my dreams dire request.

“Are you going to sleep till noon?”

“Noon?”

“Honestly, are you a mockingbird of a dog?”

“Wolf. And I’m not used to your kind’s terms.”

“Noon. When the sun is at the highest point in the sky.” I nodded and opened my jaws inviting in a large yawn before settling back in the chair. I had fallen asleep after the long night’s entertainment of answering her millions of questions. By the time she was done asking and she had fiddled with my wound I must have fallen asleep before I saw to it that she fastened the bandage. There was something more intimate between us now. A heavy secret that was hard for anyone to keep hold of yet I knew by the way my girl had come and gone through the pipeline of her village, scarcely pausing to speak to her own kind, she probably could.

“Will you come to the wood in the spring?” She was armed for a tete on tete but hadn’t prepared for the conversation to change altogether. Her expression amused me.

“No.”

“Why will you not?”

“Because you will have returned to your own kind and you will gobble me up.”

“Not unless you beg.” I watched her cheeks bloom with vermillion. The tide running through the strings in my arteries thrummed and I preened over her embarrassed state.

“Don’t be crude.” She was already dressed to receive the day. She fanned the large scarlet cloak around her shoulders letting the hood dangle like a deceased goose’s neck. She then pulled on her boots. I too had long questions about why they smelt like water and salt and she explained to me what the sea was. We spent the evening hours educating one another but I had petered out by the witching hour and she was still high off the exhilaration of another world she knew nothing about that she kept going despite my multitudes of yawning fits.

“Am I to be disturbed by your burly woodsman?” As she tied the sash to her waist and began to button the three little pockets sewed to the top of her cloak she cast me a glance over her shoulder. The vision of her back in my dream merged with the woman in front of me. I watched the bows of her lips upturn and her eyes danced with amusement.

“Why would you be jealous?”

“How could I be jealous if I’m a dead man? Or as you put it, dead dog.” I was the cause for that delicious smile melt away and she turned to picking up her basket.

“Will you go to the wood?”

“I have a craving to hunt until dark but if you tell me to stay I shall obey. After all, aren’t dogs loyal?” She glanced at me once more, this time without the aid of alight eyes and a smirk, she merely thought and then spoke.

“I would like you to. Not because I fear for someone seeing you, but for the sake of you not changing forms and agitating your wound. You don’t need a fever of infection. You should stay in the state as you are now and rest. Keep off the leg.” I nodded to her.

“I shall await your return my lady.” This time she gave me her brooding scowl before she slipped out into the morning light leaving me with the presence of her ghost.

As I manually walked in a dreamlike state fulfilling my deliveries I couldn’t help but think back to my dream the night before. It was so strange and so real. I felt as though I had been tilt on my own axis to the dark side of a mirror and no matter my actions everything just seemed…wrong. Like tasting a blueberry hoping for the sweetness but recoiling at the bitterness that sometimes clung to un-nurtured berries.

I had my cottage in the woods, deep in the woods. I knew this because as I emerged from the bow of the doorframe and gazed upon the hot summer sky, I was sheltered by thick canopies allowing the sky to elude my vision but in bits and pieces of patchwork. The shadows played their hands and making the surrounding area of my home nothing more than a dark gumshoe or mirk. I ventured out to gather herbs to dry in the sunlight that filtered through but during my expedition I felt a heavy weight in my chest. My mind was clicking in a panic and all the hairs on my arm and neck stood on end. Someone was watching me. I saw shadows creep beneath the ribs of the trees and they took on many forms. The three brothers that always threated to coup against the council, the man that was hanged but a year ago for touching children, even the village fool who had no more sense than a common pauper should.

All these shapes surrounded me and I felt like withering away into the breeze but no, I was at the center of their interest. I feared they would all reach out to claw at me. So I ran. I found a narrow gap of escape and ahead of me the vast expanse of wood was a labyrinth of different possibilities. I could take different paths if I needed to alter my course but as I glanced behind to make sure I wasn’t be pursued I was suddenly careening down a large slope to the bank of a creek with jagged rocks waiting to mangle my bones.

I somehow managed to stall my inertia and my fists clung to the hot sand bank searching for the flitting shadows to scale down the slope but as my breath slowed back to its natural pace I heard the echoing of a twig snapping. The babbling of the creek hid the assailant’s whereabouts but something was getting closer, gaining on me in my state of ignorance. Then out of the breadth of the trees came a large wolf with big yellow eyes. My wolf. I sighed in relief. He grinned showing all his alabaster teeth that seemed to be made of hardened marble. Unbreakable. Perfect razor sharp knives stuck in something that didn’t understand human thinking and went on the pain in its belly that moved it to satiate its every endless hunger.

“Are you lost my dear?” Like a mirror the voice that came out of yellow eyes was different. There was no kindness. There was no gentle rasp. Nothing but steel against steel that hurt my ears and flashed panic through my body.

“I-I am.” I hadn’t meant to bleat it out to him. It was weakness. But those two words alone had sealed my fate. He came down in a graceful lithe motion as the muscles in his shoulder blades rose and his haunches kept balance going one leg after the other, and his long flowing tail dragged against the foliage coating the slope.

“Are you hurt my dear?” I could smell the muddy sludge beneath the brooks surface. I saw a rat snake slink across the surface of the water and stifled a scream. Yellow eyes ignored it. He was circling me as I sat up to my knees. I squeezed my folded hands in my lap to hide their trembling. I tried to steel my voice but it came out in quivers.

“I-I am not.” I could feel his hot breath upon my neck as he circled closer and closer each turn. But he did not pounce. Not yet.

“Are you poorly my dear?” I shook my head this time. Too afraid my conviction would forever be damned by the shaking in my voice. Then we were face to face. His grin and hot tongue so close I could smell the metallic in the back of his throat. I could smell his kill.

“Then you will make a good meal.” And before I could protest his jaws slithered open unhinging in a monstrous way that would allow him to swallow me whole.

I had awoken in a panic that the beads of sweat that clung to my skin were burning. One of my patrons, a young immigrant women whose skin was like paper, veins a blue, and hair as red as embers, gingerly shook my shoulder. I blinked looking at her when I realized she said something.

“Come again?”

“I said, you look a bit pallor. Perhaps you should go home and rest.” I smiled waving her concern away and handing her an envelope filled with imported tealeaves and spices.

“Your chai. I’ve been holed up in my house thanks to Mother Nature’s bought that I’ve been itching to get outside and move. After all that is why I chose the lifestyle of a delivery woman.”

“Well remember to take care tonight then and go to rest a little sooner than you normally do.” I waved to her before departing. Was the dream a bad omen? Should I abandon the dream of moving? It had lingered in my mind for so long that I longed to be near the lake that was at the furthest sector of the wood. It was only a half hour walk and many fisherman tried their luck at catching the rainbow bellied sunfish and trout that lived in the vast expanse. None came away with favorable results so they braved the week journey to the sea of the North and were rewarded a far greater feat than they wasted sitting for hours on end in the sun kissed lake.

Most took to the lake for a way to escape the heat of the summer solstice but I enjoyed the view and happily sat upon the dock. I had only three more deliveries and I trusted in yellow eyes to keep his word and rest for the day. Animals were always moving. Always exploring. Always defending their territory. So I knew it must be hard to have that instinct buried within one and unable to act on it. I willed him in my mind to just hold on a little longer. I could barely get him to promise to stay indoors today. I failed to see how I could appease him within the week. And all the Saints and Gods help me when he would need to stay for weeks until the stitches were able to be taken out. 

I feared if he kept at his routine he would have a permanent limp. I would splint and cast his leg if I needed to truly immobilize him. Perhaps if I told him of my threat it would help ease his restlessness. Then again I thought about the children bouncing around after my delivery that one day and knew it was impossible.

When I returned home I moved the chair to the beam in the middle of the room. I gingerly fit my nail into the very faint crack of the seam prying the wooden door open retrieving my leather journal. I flipped to the blank pages eager to fill them with every word I could purge from memory about last night’s conversation. He spun so much gold I didn’t know where to start. But as I put the metal tip laced with ink to the page I suddenly was overcome with one word. _Betrayal_. If I put any of his confidence upon these pages I knew subconsciously I would betray him. I couldn’t do it. Not without his blessing.

I heard the squabbling of my hens outside and when I turned to look out my frost coated window I saw yellow eyes in human form dawning the pile of furs I kept on my lounge chair. And he was right next to the pen looming over, craning his neck to see on the other side of the wire. I ran to him gingerly pulling at his elbow and getting him away from the chickens who were frantically scrambling about in their little closed sanctuary.

“Saints! What are you doing out here? You’re going to get your own hide stuck on someone’s meat storage if they see you out here!” his eyes were hallow. They were deep black holes that didn’t have the light twinkle in the corners of them. I recoiled two steps away when I saw the smear of blood across his mouth and a few feathers stuck to the corners of his lips. I held my hand to my own mouth horrified by the image before me. I was leading him inside without the pull of his protesting. This was his second time he could have gotten caught. I wanted to chide him for that fact alone but other matters called for urgent attention.

I dipped a cold cloth into the basin swiping away the smear of vermillion painted over his lips. I was focused on ridding him of his crime that I thought how silly it was that I was terrified of my own persecution. But what if he had wandered to a neighbor’s pen and slaughtered their roost? Fear gripped the inside of my windpipe and when he spoke the light had returned to his eyes and I wanted to break down and weep, shake him senseless.

“That’s very cold.”

“You fool! If Rika saw you---“

“The woodsman?”

“Yes!”

“Saw me where?” I looked at him incredulously. But his confusion was genuine. My heart rattled against my chest wanting to break free. I went to the window hearing him struggle to get out of his chair limping in my direction. He looked over my shoulder, his body pressed to my back. I bristled and shooed him off to give me space. I didn’t see any chicken corpses lying about or drag marks or blood spatter. Just on his mouth. I looked to him then his wound. His bandage was entirely soaked. I rushed to grab the medicine basket getting to work. A thought struck me as quick as lightening was to split a tree. Maybe he felt something warm, touched it with his fingers, and then unknowingly wiped his mouth.

But as I looked from my work to him I saw the light dim from his eyes until they were nothing more than black seas and his hands were on my throat.


	6. Scars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my loves, so I flubbed on the chapters skipping an entire important paragraph so please re-read at the woodsman chapter.

She was gone for a long time. Four sun arks to be precise. My body was itching to do something. But what did humans do when they were alone in their homes? With a pack there was always something to do. I wanted to feel the sensation of the wind trickle through my fur. I wanted to forget the hours tracking a foe worthy of outsmarting me until its inevitable end. I wanted to feel the bones break under the weight of my jaws. I could practically smell and taste the blood, warm and slick and salty as it slid down my throat. There was no danger here to be had. I could sleep until the suns ninth ark in the sky after the night broke. I was growing complacent.

I took in all the smells in here. Spices and meats, strong herbs and plants hanging from the rafters. And something else. Something hidden away. But it was out of reach. I centered beneath the scent. It was her. But why would she had rubbed it on one of the long poles holding her roof up? I was tall, but not enough to press my nose to where the scent was wafting from. I nudged a chair from the table under the beam and balanced working through the pain of clenched teeth and stretching until the tips of my fingers came away with her perfume. To the untrained eye one wouldn’t see the invisible lining in the wood that fit the beam only a hand span up and out. I knocked hoping it would loose, but it stubbornly stayed.

I grabbed a small knife she used to put jellies and butter on crescent rolls and made sure the teeth gingerly took to the sliver of the slat popping it out. The hallow door opened and I saw now it had hinges on the inside to make the door swing out. I reached inside the dark hallow and felt something rough and tough like a cow hide. I pulled out a book. It was bound by leather straps and I inhaled the cover admiring whatever craftsman dried the hide into a fine quality. Mom kept a book just like this. Not as big however. I opened it glossing over the contents fascinated. Before I knew it I was slumped comfortably back in her chair, wrapped in the furs, and thumbing through the brittle pages.

She filled each page with clever details of plants, animals, and little scribbles about her life and others. But mainly it was the drawings of the animals that drew my attention. Mother called it art. It was a talent only those who were born with could conjure. I had seen painting and sculptures of woodwork and metal but never had I ever thought something flat and manmade could jump off the page. She had details in the fur, the feathers, and even the eyes were alive. There were profiles of black bears, busts, full scale drawings, close ups. Then the next page was grizzlies. I stopped at a particular page feeling my fingers shaking as I looked upon the old bear with the scar the creatures named Jessep. It was if he was trapped in this little book, eyes alive and watching me. The scar accurately in the place I remembered as a pup following him around watching and wondering how something that lived in the wood could live this long and not be killed by others. He didn’t have muscle like the other younger males, and he had bare patches of fur on the insides of his hind legs and forearms. She got every detail perfect. When did she see him? I eagerly devoured her descriptions and words.

I remember thinking Jessep had shed his mortal body and become a spirit of the forest. And as time went on his left eye became blind and milky as the moons surface. I saw the little creatures scampering over the crease of the page to the other side leaving footprints behind. She even drew the sunlight’s shadow as if the pages were made of snow and they left little acorn sized depression into the page. Then there was a large chunk devoted to me. Yellow eyes. She scribed when we first regarded each other up until my last visit the solstice before fall. I remember sweeping through, busy with other things, and I only had time for a brief glance and then I was on my way. She captured the texture of my fur, the fullness of my tail, and even the wetness of my nose. She added heavy charcoal when the shadows blanketed my mass making me nothing more than an inky blob against white, yet added white chalk to add the details of snow. I saw it cling to my lashes, to my muzzle, to the tips of my fur, and…the white small tuft I had on my forefinger.

There was something on the back of this page. The last entry. It was a messy but quick sketch of me in this form. It was a close up. I looked at myself wondering if I looked like the mutt I felt like. My hair was mussed, the tips of my ears slightly pointed, eyes yellow, and…I felt the pull of my lips as I gazed on the anatomy of my “large” hands. I compared the real life version to the drawn one. There was a small blot on the page as if she was ready to write something but decided against it. I heard a pile of snow topple from the roof and thought it could be here coming home. I set the book back into its place and shut the door until a little click sounded and it disappeared with the grain of the wood.

I explored her home. I never moved anything out of its place but if I found a jar I rotated it to inspect its contents. She collected things that reminded me of my mother and father. Maybe she had been born with a little wild inside her like us. Maybe she was equipped with an old soul. I was becoming more enamored with her. Fascinated by the girl in red.

I watched her feed the logs into the fire and at times I had forgotten I wasn’t covered in my fur in this form and somewhere in the rush of finding her journal, I forgot to put her furs back on to keep warm. The room started to drop in temperature as well. So I wrapped up in them, went outside and gathered and armful of wood setting two logs into the ashes watching it spark back to life. As I went to shut the door I caught the scent of the fowls on the other side of the house, carried on the wind to my nostrils. A deep hunger awoke and I was moving on instinct. I found the coop. It was so easy to reach in and devour all the hens that were scrambling about. Humans made it so easy to trap the creatures we happily feed on.

But this prey was too easy. I opened the door and was suddenly inside. I reveled in their cries, I wanted to fall into that black pit where I would only awake after the carnage was over. To be in the blissful state of silencing their screams, crunch on their little bones, fill my belly full of white tender meat. I was bent over gathering a clump of feathers clogged in the snow bringing it to my nose and taking in the primal smell. My fingers trembled as the snow melted away and the gentle caress of feathers was a symphony to my inner demon. The raw smell of iron rippled through my fantasy. I felt the twinge of my wound and came away with hot blood. I smiled at my painted fingers before looking at the feathers still stuck to my tips. I will carve that woodsman’s heart out of his meaty chest and I will rip it to shreds in front of him. Then I’ll declare her mine in front of him. My blood was rushing, I felt the wound pulsate in response. Weeping at my transgression. I’d damn the consequences in return.

Then I heard her voice but it was far away. Through a gauzy layer of cloth I saw her form move. She looked at me afraid. Then I awoke in the chair with the kiss of cold being forced upon my mouth. Then she was there. She finally focused into a defined sharp image but as she spoke and I answered I felt the veil coming down around me once more. The familiarity of it bringing me back into the deepest parts of my darkness. She was here with me. She was vulnerable. I saw her lips, I saw her vocal cords vibrate beneath her milky throat. I want to make her mine.

She would pull away, create a rift voluntarily to flutter about just to avoid me. She was a hummingbird constantly shifting in the wind. Always moving, never resting unless you kept a close eye on her and her period of rest was but the blink of an eye. How do predators keep their prey from squirming? They sunk their claws or jaws in the skin. My hands were on her throat which stilled her. Her brilliant tawny spheres were wide and beautiful and the pulse within her throat beat like a butterfly trapped against glass. Her pulse was liquid fire beneath my thumb. The feathery locks of her hair were twined around my fingers. Her petal lips parted as she stole air into a startled gasp. What other reactions might I get from her? I nosed her cheek, to her jawline, and then found the spot of my heart’s desire.

I made a mistake. All the warning signs that were implanted in my mind sprang to life. I put more trust in a wild being than listening to the good sense of my neighbor. To myself. Now it was all coming back in a winding spool of regret and I was tearing his character apart. Why didn’t I listen to my head in the first place? Wolves could never be domesticated. Wolves weren’t meant to be. Sure there were very rare cases when grandfather had found a stray pup when it was young and raised it until it could be released didn’t mean it was stripped of the wild inside. When he released it, it stole one lingering glance to the man who raised it and took to the wood like greeting an old friend. He took the wood like duck to water. Effortlessly he forged his own path.

There was a small sliver inside me that associated yellow eyes with the dog I grew up with. That trust had resulted in me being immobilized by the sheer force of his hand. I was frozen. I was at the mercy of a monster and the tales my mind was spinning wasn’t helping slow my heart rate. I hadn’t seen the moment when his eyes darkened into the cold dredges of a shark’s eye. I barely registered what was happening but lost track of his movement and suddenly I could smell the earth in his hair and felt the warm press of his lips against my neck. _Never run from a predator_. But he was in the form of a man---so perhaps---I held my breath, felt all my muscles tense, my adrenaline strumming in my veins as I mentally steeled myself. My limbs were moving. Fast and unyielding to the flash of danger I left behind. While he was distracted I found my footing focusing on the room to that would lead me to a back door.

If I could just get to the mud room and to the back door then I would be in the clear. But before my thoughts could stitch together he had an arm fastened around my waist and I spun until the ceiling clung to my vision. I willed my eyes to shut until the room stilled and when I opened them, yellow eyes was there. There would be only one other alternative to use. And that meant digging my fingers into his wound or getting a good swift kick in. But pain radiated in my chest. Guilt. My gut roiled but my mind was screaming at me to land the blow before my window of opportunity closed.

“Yellow eyes.” The shadow of his hand loomed over my face and for a terrifying second I thought he was going to slash my face to ribbons. I would be blind and bleeding. But his palm hovered. And then I couldn’t control the quiver in my breath and I closed my eyes rejecting death with open ones. Then something familiar rippled through me as his fingertips landed over the bridge of my nose. The sensation pooling inside me like the natural warmth of the sunlight. My heartbeat evened, and then the tickling flutter sensation was circling within my stomach. His eyes were still tar pits but there was still a faint familiarity to them. I watched the hue change before my eyes. Like milk pluming within the water, they regained their ochre signature color. I took in a sharp intake of breath when the pads of his tips found the bottom of my lips.

His eyes following the trail he was making over the features of my face. There was a childlike curiosity in those gentle touches and they brought me back to the days when I sat with the notebook propped upon my knees and yellow eyes and I were cautiously taking one another in. I studied him. The way he walked, the rope of his muscles as he stalked about, and most importantly the way he seemed to be looking straight at me as a reflection of myself. But wolves couldn’t look at you with a gaze as steady as mans, they couldn’t study with a furrowed brow like us.

“Sasuke.” I blinked. Processing. Did he sneeze? “That’s my name. Not yellow eyes. My name that my mother gave me on my name day. And my brother.”

“Your brother?”

“He’s long under the ground now.”

“He---died?”

“He did.” Then it occurred to me something I hadn’t even questioned until now. I looked him over as though I was seeing him in a new light.

‘I’ve never seen you come through with a pack. Are you…?”

“A rogue.” He finished the sentence I was too frightened to speak. If they bled into the air they became real. Real enough to offend him and hurt.

“How did you come to be one?” The panic from before dissolved, the transgression of his hands on my throat, pacified. For now. But the damage was done. He withdrew holding the last of his crumbling walls up with all the will he had left. I knew what it meant to want to keep all your secrets inside. To hide away your emotions for fear of opening yourself up to another person. But somehow I had hoped that after all these years of loneliness he might want to risk exposing himself to me. I don’t know why I felt obligated that he needed to confide in me but it was such a primal want that I almost felt possessive over him. Maybe it was my guilt of doubting him an hour ago. Or maybe it was because I indebted myself to him after Rika let the bullet free from its chamber. Maybe it was just my foolish responsibility but I felt I knew him on a more intimate level. Not just sleeping next to him or healing his wounds, but the years we watched one another like it was a dance we were used to. I would wait for him to arrive and there he would be. But now he had a human form. One I could fall for. It hadn’t been possible that my feelings could melt into something more but here we were saying and expressing all these things I always kept hidden.

I would have never stayed when a man begged me to. Never would have accepted him naked in my home. But he was like greeting an old friend. One that I watched over the fence and came to adore. But now there was this new kind of wave that ran through me and it was so foreign I wasn’t sure what I could categorize it as. All I knew was he threw me into different fits of madness. One minute I could be angry and upset with him, the next worried sick, and then the close moments like this. Where I yearned to inspect him closer. As he was doing now. I was raised with freedom. My father warned me to always keep in line. There were still rules society abided by. Men were higher in status. Women were submissive and dutiful. But defiance burn through me like parchment to fire. I knew when to pick my battles and when it was appropriate to stay quiet but my fire was one of my traits I prided myself on. Yet here now beneath this man I was regressing into the women I saw fall over themselves to please the man they were pursuing.

Another ripple of silver flashed across my body in an arctic wind. No. It wasn’t possible and it couldn’t be. I had forgotten I asked him a question and I had to mentally shake myself back to my body.

“Your pack is your family. My family had ties to bad wolves. When you get assigned roles to your pack you can carry them out dutifully or you can rebel and try and lead them to a more progressive ambition. One that wasn’t just living day by day and meal by meal. My father was the alpha. My mother his mate. My brother was four springs older than I had been and so I was his responsibility until I was old enough to work with him and prove my place in the pack. If pups grew and the alpha felt threatened they might be usurped they can post a challenge. I hadn’t ever imagined the strays we bonded with and grew with would be capable of seeding a plan and nurturing it ten years later. We became invested, they had merged with us before I was born, and my father and mother and their family trusted them to be good to their word. The plan was dormant until the opportunity presented itself. My father was wounded. One of the strays that was only three seasons with us challenged my father when he became wounded after a battle with a moose took a turn for the worst. Instead of waiting to see if he would pass into the earth or heal and continue to lead, the stray challenged him for his title. They brawled. Dad fought valiantly and in the battle my brother sought after the small ten pack of supporters he converted to his side. In that slaughter my family was left with their throats ripped and only a good five of his pack left in fatality. My brother had managed to get five. The stray wasn’t honorable. He fought dirty, and didn’t use the wolf way when fighting. He held none of the traditions the old ones instilled.”

He took a brief pause and I knew he was replaying the scene within his mind. I felt terrible for making him relive it.

“And what happened to the stray that rebelled? Does he lead his own pack now?”

“I couldn’t just---run with my tail between my legs and I knew I didn’t have the fraction of strength my older brother had but I would be damned if I was going to flee from a mutt. I wasn’t a pup. I was at least five seasons old which to your kind might be young, but to us, it’s the third season when a wolf is considered a warrior. Of course there’s more obstacles to prove like the ones I told you the other night. So I was confident my will and fierce hunger for vengeance would carry me to the end of their lives. I was faster than the seniors, my movements weren’t slow because I was thinking how to counter. I just did as my body commanded. I dodged. I lunged, I found flesh under my teeth, and when I squeezed the life out of them and listened as their bones cracked I knew that they would die choking on their blood. I reached the alpha and I knew he had relied on the injury of my father to give his rise. But he hadn’t counted on his supporters to be dead and one of my clan still standing. Now he didn’t have a pack to command and he robbed us both of the chance to live. I took joy in listening to his whines warbling to a low whistle from the hold in his trachea. I stood over him, enjoying the fear of his wild eye rolling into his skull, and for the first time I felt like death embodied. I was just that. A shadow that moved with lightening beneath his paws, and an instinct to know the kill points on my own kind. I knew where the soft spots were and from that day I walked on without fear.”

He lift his head, the memory coming back to him in a resilient thunderstorm. I hadn’t realized when my hand found his during his story but I knew it when my fingers gave a gentle squeeze to his and I was giving him a weakened smile of encouragement.

“I know how hard that must have been. To go on your own. To lose everything in a single night. I commend your endearing strength.” His eyes floated to our hands and I watched him gingerly brush the back of my knuckles to his lips. I gave him another small smile feeling my body alight in candlelight. If I knew what was going to happen in a years’ time, I’m not sure I would have brought a wild wolf into my home.

I don’t think one was meant to fall in love with the Gods. For in some stories they recounted how the Gods could never know what love was. They could mimic it, they could even get close to the feeling but soon they would become enraged when it was forever out of their reach. Something they could never obtain. Never have. So why would something ancient that has only ever know that taste of bliss only when indulging kills ever know what that feels like? How could it ever be expected to feel something that has never been known to it?

Because when I think back on it now. With my lips parted and the taste of copper in my mouth, eyes relieved that the muted canvas of the sky allows me to keep a steady gaze on the lazy clouds that rolled by, and the gashes in my leg slowly draining me of my warmth despite it being the hottest equinox…maybe yellow eyes never intended to love. He danced to the right steps, said the right things, but what predator isn’t willing to bait its prey with silky cooing words. That dream I decided to forget which felt like forever ago now…the one where I fell down the bank and yellow eyes unhinged his jaws to eat me whole. Perhaps that was far closer to the truth to what he was. But like I said---I wasn’t a seer and I never would have been able to foretell this outcome in a new years’ time. The shadowy creature rounded back and obstructed my view. I only tasted thick blood that pooled in my throat. I could scarcely suck in air and I relied heavily on my nose.

I didn’t have any more strength to fight for my life. But when I looked into the jaws of death, to the void in the back of its gullet, I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t even here in my body waiting to receive this murderer. All I could think about was how yellow eyes had been. And what our winter had meant. What all our encounters meant. It wasn’t love. Maybe for him it was more of----an obsession.


	7. Ravaged

The thaw was beginning. The hole in my leg had healed but the tissues that bound themselves together felt tight on certain stretching’s. During the darker nights I dared to test the limitations of Lily. After she exposed her name to me I could taste the very flower she was named after. I wanted to drown myself in thousands of them just to get closer to the name that was given to my mate. I found myself watching her fascinated by every little habit. The way she scrunched her nose when she nearly burnt our food, the way her feet shuffled unwilling to lift from the stone flooring as she made her way from the cold den to her room, and the way she flexed and curled her toes when she wrote or read something.

I silently watched her and when she came out of her trance she became aware of how vulnerable the moments to herself made her look and sought out my own eyes which I closed before she had a chance to catch me gawking. I often fell asleep in front of the fire. As the wound transformed into healed tissue and lean muscle I found transforming became easier. When mother had taught me and my brother the first time I expressed how it was impossible. But she told me magic was like a tiny string you had to find within your body and once you knew where to pull it, you could bend it to your will. Like dawning a mask. But magic had a price. And the price of a skinwalker was pain. For ones bones to conjoin and break apart to take the shape of a man and curl into one’s self as the arch in your spine curved and tightened to that of a wolf.

I found myself bound to this place. To her. Now my fear had shifted from being afraid to be trapped in this confined body to changing into my true form and leaving never to return. The temptation would be too great and I wouldn’t forsake one for the other. She told me tales of other mythical creatures. I resonated with the tale of a mermaid in one of her poems. When she expressed the title I found the name even odder than the morbid collection she enjoyed reading. Though I cannot read their scribes on the pages, I had come to know the poem by memory. I often would look blankly at the page and scan over the words as if I knew them.

_“ The Miserable Tail of the Mermaids Mishaps and Misfortunes of Marriage_ “

“ _A wild creature she may be, did find her heart contended with something dark and deep. Her longing was as bottomless as the sea, and ever changing tide, and dark pulling waves, to the furthest abysmal voids no others lived to see. Now her beauty did draw the deaths of men, but so too could she think of others were equally did contend, the number of skulls within their caves, in the forgotten bones in the blue ghost light littered the bottom of their homes, forever their slaves. She came upon a man she could not judge, for when she looked upon him her cold fish heart did thump. All the faces became a blur and their flesh so delicious, for what soulless creature who only knew bottomless hunger to satiate, hadn’t become something called a monster, something relentlessly vicious? But this one made all her hunger satiate, she wished for nothing more than to steal his heart, and in time she knew she could become placate. But men did not bore gills or webs on their feet, and as she pulled him down into the depths for her father and mother to greet, did she find his eyes rolled to the heavens, his soul had gone, where she could not reclaim him. And so her parents feasted on the drowned piece of meat, all the while the saddened fish girl did weep._

 _The next one she knew she would not waste, for she hated the words her parents spoke when they said they had brought her something with such delicious taste. Many were judged and drowned and when at last a contender did rise, she traded legs for fins and walked clumsily along the sanded shores to claim her prize. But then her lustful heart grew sour and withered, and she yearned for the seas dark depths and found herself become completely dithered. She wanted to be such a beautiful bride, but there was something that was always stirring within her deep inside, something that she had forgotten and was so eager to hide. But she found she could not leave the land and go to the sea for here is where she had to stay, here to him she was tied. She found it easier to sooth her pride and when they would lie together and she was never with child, it was easy to carve a smile upon his throat, and down to the docks she strolled to the moats. And so mermaids were tenacious lovers, to trust one was to trust the jaws of death, because if you’re not careful, they could be heaven to you for a fleeting moment, but will drag you down to their hellish sea dark depths._ “

A lot to memorize but like I said, the story resonated. I could never hurt my Lily. I could never grow weary of her. I’d never tire of that laugh or smile. Mermaids were vain, wolves were not.

I prayed silently to the old ones that they could come from the cosmos and turn my Lily into one of us. Humans wrote stories about us, got things wrong or mixed up. There were whispers from what Lily called other “villages” about men being bit by wolves and undertaking the transformation to a skinwalker. However, this was not the way it was done despite the stories written around this legend. The longer the days the more we spoke about all the whispers she knew about. I had never known other skinwalkers outside my own pack. I never heard of these other creatures she told me about, jins in far away lands with nothing but sand, imps in ancient ruins of Scottland, redcaps, unicrons, mermaids. All these things left a terrible prickling sensation beneath my skin and a bad taste in my mouth. Lies. All of them. But what I did not see with my own eyes could yet be proven against me, perhaps these things did exist but it sounded false.

During the nights I had felt the familiar pull of the moon wishing to coax me back to the forests comforting arms. But I was no slave to the one outside any longer. My moon was in here. Sleeping in front of me. All the forces that compelled me in the past I always seemed to gravitate back to her. I spent the cold season fighting to keep warm, eating more than week old frozen meat fused to the snow, and in those confusing days that merged together in a blinding haze I felt longing. Just as I itched to be rid of a cage, did I want to see her again. I wanted to invite her to glimpse into my world even if I knew she could not stay.

When mother would have quiet moments with us while father was out with the pack on a hunt my brother and I far too little to go, she would sooth out itching nerves with stories of her and father. I had asked her how she had known father was her mate? She had said she would never tire of his scent even if it was coated in blood, sweat, or mud. She didn’t want to roam the land with any other wolf but him. She could never get enough of him.

I reflect upon the words she told us so many seasons ago and I think back on my fifth spring in. As I parted from the deceased pack and try to find my place in this unforgiving world, I caught a scent. At first it was faint. I meant to ignore it as I nosed the ground for signs of a vole or grouse, when that smell no bigger than an acorns width began to peak my interest. It was insistent like the nagging of does to their fawns. I followed the trail until something walked between the wood. It was a creature I had never laid eyes on. It moved quietly and with determination. Like it knew how to navigate the labyrinth of the woods. I dared to creep closer on silent footfalls, avoiding the brittle leaves and dropped branches.

I nosed the air and it was in my favor, I gathered all the strange bright creatures secrets. Female, not very old like Jessep. The rain had come down the night before in heavy painful blows. Now the earth was rich with its musk. I saw her soft footing sink into the mud, heard the sloshing as her footing wavered and she threw her little arms out to compose her balance. Something strange an inanimate swing from her arm. The term I know now as a ‘basket’. The path she was following was odd. It smelt unnatural and yet it lived here as long as I had. No weeds grew from this dirt path, no flowers, and no trees obstructed its run. A path. Mowed and tended to by human hands and left to let lie. Natural. I followed her back on my gilded path between the trees afraid the mud would give me away.

She disappeared into a large structure that contained the scent of her blood but was of a much older age. I stalked a safe distance watching as two figures emerged. Grandparents. The girl often visited them. She often came alone. Even my mother if she were still among us would tsk such a small thing too be as foolish as to wander on her own within the wood. Always there were sweet smells that wafted from the basket. Always she smiled when her grandparents stilled her little feet and looked as though they were strangling her. A hug. Then one day the old female gingerly removed the hood of her cape. I thought they were skins they could easily pull on and off. Humans needed to wear clothes to protect themselves from the elements due to their lack of body fur.

Like removing a crown from a nobles head I was in awe of the chestnut silk that cascaded like a waterfall around her shoulders. Her apple cheeks raised and honey pot eyes crinkled as the elder ones praised their granddaughter. Suddenly I knew what mother meant. Without the influence of heat, I was enamored by this little creature. I wanted to hear her laugh, I wanted to be the one to make her smile, and I wanted to wrap my own set of arms around her and embrace her that way.

I listened to a low murmur escape her lips. She pressed her palm to her eye rousing from a dream. She looked up at me with a soft mist in her eyes and a faint warm glow from her cheeks.

“What’s wrong my little bird?” She blinked coming fully awake and settled her hands beneath her pillow.

“Did you say something?” She hummed threatening to fall back to sleep and leave me to my effervescing thoughts.

“I need to tell you something.” She sparked awake and her brow furrowed. Those pouty lips turning to a scowl.

“What is it?”

“I know what happened to your elders. I know what happened to your parents too.” She slid up erect. The air between us changed. I sensed her anger and confusion.

“What do you mean? How do you know about my family?”

“I made sure you never spotted me when you were younger. I’ve watched you more summers than you realize. I was always a shadow. I could catch glimpses of your life when I wasn’t migrating around and I remember like the others I was---drawn to the strong odor of burning wood. The others who were scavengers came for the burning rotting flesh that came hand in hand with the wind.” I watched a tear roll over her cheeks and the pain in my chest tightened like dry hide in the summer heat. I wanted to reach out and touch her. Embrace her like the elders. But no matter the miserable truth, it needed to be said.

“I knew the longitude and latitude of that walk by heart without ever having to follow the scent trail back to it. I knew when the direction of the wind brought that smell to me and the others on the wind that I felt a maddening sick feeling that you were in danger. I haven’t run that swiftly since defending my right to live and for once I feared for something other than myself. I knew my heart would shrivel if I never got to hear the sunshine in your laughter. If I couldn’t watch you and your elders visit in the gardens they made. Your elders were so good to the forest, and they became part of it, accepted by all. The roots, the plants, the trees, the animals.

I came to the house, the flames had eaten the wood in a ravenous rage that it was painful to even get close. The heat was unbearable but I had to know your smell wasn’t mingling with it. I needed to even if that cost me the burn of my nose. I confirmed the bodies in the fire were your elders. Your parents. I could smell things similar to you like the clothing you wore or toys you touched, but your scent was very faint. Then there was something foreign. I circled around avoiding the collapsing structure of the house and found a group of three men standing a ways away in the wood. I couldn’t understand them but I can recall the words now. Now that I’ve spent time in this form. They were talking about how the plan to murder your elders and parents had finally come to fruition.”

She was so still during all that time. Her hand was pressed to her mouth, her knuckles white, her face pale, her tears turning to rivers. I was absorbed in telling her what I could recant that I hadn’t felt my fingers go numb. I glanced down seeing her hand atop mine, squeezing, urging me to go on, or pleading to me to stop. I laced out fingers together and brought her knuckles to my lips. I found my courage in that kiss and I knew she was in pain. But she needed this. She needed closure.

“My…my father and mother they…” She hiccupped but trudged through. “They were traders. They would import and export shipments. My dad had a horse carriage to move around in and make deliveries. Mother was always writing down things to do with numbers and the goods they received and shipped out. We even traded upon the seas. They were the pipeline of the village. And then one day a foreign merchant came to my father from a ship that reeked of dead fish entrails and spoke to him about a trade that would bring him more wealth in a months’ time than his humble self could earn in a week. I was too little to understand but…he spoke about skin trade. I was confused I thought he meant trading furs. We already dealt with that when the trappers would come down from the mountains after being away for the eight months that would be most potent for skinning and…now I know he meant trading in human lives. Women and children, boys, and men. His crew all dealt a cut.”

“I do remember them smelling of salt and fish.”

“And my father refused them. But because we had a declared name we were the most powerful to use. They came to our house two more times. My father grew restless. He was saying it was dangerous to live here and he and mother wanted to warn my grandparents who lived in the woods. They knew I would be fine with the door locked and they needed to be fast and not slowed by worrying about me slowing them or wandering. I knew what the men looked like and I knew my neighbor would look after me. We waited. I waited. Then morning came. My neighbor too grew worried as she paced our house and then…and…the high council came to call on us.” Her voice slipped away into a wet sobbing.

I pulled her into my arms and let her cry until the storm inside subsided. I held her as she wept burying my body tightly pressed against hers offering her escape.

“I killed them.” Her head snapped up practically punching me beneath the jaw.

When he said that I was ready to beat him to a pulp. But it was fleeting. I saw the color drain into his eyes as they flashed dangerously, but his mind was far from his body. He was recounting from a memory and looked past me and into that night.

“It was the first time I found the thread…the one mother told me was inside my brother and I. I felt the magic run through me like a million ants trailing beneath my skin. I felt rage. They would steal your smile from me. They would steal the only thing that was left for me to hope for in this world and I saw red. I wanted to kill them. They took you away from me and I tore their limbs from their sockets. I heard their bones crunch, listened to them bellow until their mangled bodies made them cry wet gurgling noises. I took pleasure in the fact I was the cause of their pain. I didn’t care if they had thundersticks…guns. But I never heard the thunder and I didn’t feel the pain that came with it afterward. So it gave me free reign to circle back to the other two that meant to crawl away like sluggish worms. I fed the ground its penance of blood for this transgression. I could smell one of them had the same strong smell of the fire that started on the house was around his fingers. He was the cause. I tore his fingers off. I ripped his wrist, his forearm, his shoulder, and then I did the same to his other arm. I swelled with pride when his soul slipped from his body and I smelt piss. The last one that was alive was the meekest. He cried and I felt the change burn through my body. I was on two legs like them. But I had more power blazing through my bones. Beneath my muscle. Mother was correct when she said once you know how to use the magic, it became easier to call upon. I watched him die too.”

Silence stretched between us. Not even the sounds of her weeping was audible. I wondered if humans were as fragile as the others thought of them to be. During the winter season three spans ago I was learning to find my footing. I came upon Jessep during a particularly bad time in my wanderings and had gone days without food. My body too weak to suss out food just as slow as I was and I lowered my standards to brittle grass and berries. I needed to build my muscle back up but it seemed impossible to survive without a pack. Then I heard the deep rumbling of Jessep as he stalked through the trees. He was a grizzly. His brows were shock white and it peppered his muzzle and froze at the very tips of his outline. He was tossing his head back and forth. Bears were terribly nearsighted and their eyes were too far apart that this motion was common from them.

The younger males that swaggered on in this fashion had gusto in their step and a puff in their chest but Jessep was just an old bear trying to look out from being snuck up on. His claws dug into the ground as if his hand was a tool fit for just this job. He would find no worms until the spring and the earth was heated on the surface. But he found roll beetles and I listened to his slack jaws smack together and the sharp crunch of their exoskeleton ground between his teeth. I felt my mouth salivating. I wasn’t confident in my skill after I avenged my packs death, I wouldn’t be confident and feel the pride of a warrior until I would kill those three men in the wood. But here I was a broken thing that no one bothered to scrap with. I followed the old bear not intending to, but was compelled to see how he survived in his more weakened state.

I sniffed the open wound he made to the ground and tongued up a beetle. I felt the little pinpoint legs scratch against my tongue and found my jaw opening and letting the dirty thing drop to the ground. Nope. Wasn’t going to endure eating those. Next, he dug at the root of a rock formation. My ears pricked to attention and I cocked my head watching this senile old male digging for what? Roots to eat? Was he sharpening his paws? Then I heard his claws connect with the soft tissue I knew sounded familiar. He buried his snout into the hole and came away with a hardened honeycomb. The pressure of his jaws easily shore the comb in two and soon he was rewarded with dripping honey. I heard him retch slightly and found myself fascinated by him and I couldn’t take my eyes off him as I sat upon the rocky crag. Dormant bees that had fit into the slots of the hive for the winter were unaware of the giant beasts attack. Their little bodies slid off his tongue and he abandoned demolishing the rest of their work. His back claws scraped at the dirt sending piles of dirt to cover the hole.

I sniffed and followed. He was heading into the heart of the wood near the falls where the rivers flowed free but wouldn’t flow until the thaw started. Blocks of ice congested the waterway. He took cautious steps over the ice, I started watching him on the bank sure his weight was going to drag him under to its icy depths. But he moved with grace that I thought he and the river understood one another and then he was digging! Surely now he was going to fall through. I heard the whistle of his nose as it pressed against the ice, listened to the grunting and huffing sounds he made as he bared his teeth and leaned as far as the capacity of the hole would allow him and after the chattering of his teeth ceased he stood pulling out a fish!

He went to the bank and ate it with vigor. I circled the hole looking at the glassy surface. There indeed were some fish just beneath the ices surface. I dug but I didn’t have Jesseps weight to make dents. Only deep scratches that would never sheer through. I met Jesseps brown eye and thought he would give me a warning growl to be on my way. But instead his circular ears came forward and now he was watching me. I went back to the hole and stuck my snout in but came away with an icy prick of cold water. I shook it out of my hairs. Jess was back to eating his fish. He was working on the tail and spine leaving the head. I licked my lips watching him and heard a wad of my drool smack against the ice.

Then Jess thrust his hips up in the air and he was moving along. Part of the spine was still there with plenty of meat as well as the head. I paced waiting for him to go. He looked back at me and rolled his head as if signaling for me to follow. I scooped the fish up in my mouth and ate as we traveled. This was how I spent my winter. Two rejects going in no particular direction. I wondered why he never bothered escaping from the cold bite of winter but I gathered due to his body mass it was because he hadn’t had a fruitful summer to store up fat. Or maybe he was just restless in his bones being older. He taught me all his tricks. I taught him how to use what little sight he had left to his advantage so he didn’t have to swing his head in constant to and froing motions.

Now I listen to the eaves outside release the water that congealed and melted when the sun touched it. Lily finally looked up at me and the memory of Jessper evaporated like mist to morning.

There was nothing to say. I remember when scouts came back and declared my mother and father had walked into a trap and were locked inside with my grandparents as the perpetrators burned them alive. I had nightmares for years about it. I also saw the fear when one mentioned them dead, their limbs torn to pieces. ‘Probably wolves’ said one of the scout ‘a pack defending their territory’. I mulled that over. I thought that at least the wolves had given me my justice and delivered the three men to the burning fires in the earth. But now a new formation took its place and I could see yellow eyes laying waste to their pitiful lives. I only had their rotten faces scorched into memory when they showed up at our door the eave before. In a way I’m glad I didn’t see the aftermath. I don’t think I could have coped with all that had happened.

His fingers brushed against my scalp, my body was slick with sweat from being pressed against him for so long and ignoring the heat that rose between us. He brushed the strands from my cheeks and I looked at him. I owed him everything. But it was deeper than that. I felt our fates were connected. They always had been. My heart constricted in my chest and the mask I wore all these years shattered. My fingers were gliding over his own cheeks. Worn from the harsh winds but still felt perfect to me. I didn’t care if I was being hoodwinked. I didn’t care if he himself deliberately caused these things to happen and he pulled the wool over my eyes, all I could see now was how he looked right now as I wore rosy spectacles. He had given me something I never would have been able to do. I would have felt sick every day if the people that had rid me of my family in a single eve had been allowed to go on living. He accosted their right to a trial.

That’s why I damned the consequences when he leaned in to kiss me. I had only four kisses in my lifetime thus far and this one would stand out. All the others seemed like gentle pecks compared to now. Because this had feeling behind it. It was of equal longing and measure. I let my body be taken in and allowed himself to indulge in the reward I wanted him to take. The early morning filtered through the window and I knew from this day on spring would be coming. But the last night of winter during my nineteenth birthday, I was ravished by the wolf.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally these two dorks do it xD


	8. "You beasts and your impulses to just...do."

The spring solstice was my busiest starting point. Everyone had been cooped up for so long we all were itching to be outside even if it was still a little chilly. But there was no more snow that stuck. There was no more gray slated sky. Yellow eyes wound healed and he abandoned the sanctuary of my home to go back to the wood. He was always back before nightfall as I was after my duties for the day were fulfilled and I never saw the blank look in his eyes again. Not since the incident with my hens who were now happily being herded into the safety of the pen. They enjoyed pulling the worms from the earth, eating the maggots that were starting to spring up like unwanted weeds, and peck at the feed, but they weren’t that dense that by night they knew the things with teeth would threaten to gobble them up like their missing sister.

I had repaired the downed fence. I patched any shingles that might have come lose and made sure to fill the drafty seams of my house with clay that dried and reinforced itself as part of my house. Then on a particular warm eve Sasuke had come back to me and offered to take me to the bones of my grandparents’ house. I hadn’t been there since I was little and had to be raised by the elderly woman who was my neighbor who looked after me that night until her death on the sixteenth year of my birth. It was a phantom I long since had forgotten. It would do me no good to revisit a ghost. The party of men that day cleared the limbs and bodies of the men that had been killed. But I still shutter at the thought of being back there.

But since our numerous love making I had given parts of myself to him I never gave to anyone else so I decided this was another step I wanted to take with the wolf. He beckoned me like an evil spirit, naked and hiding behind one of the trees. I held back my laughter. What would an outsider see if they came upon us like this? Me at the side of my house being tempted by a strange nude male waving me into the dark of the wood? The poor young fair maiden being seduced to her doom. I swept my cloak upon my shoulders and bound away with him. For a moment I was holding his hand letting him lead me blindly through angles of the trees that weren’t familiar to me. Then I was holding a tuft of fur and straining to keep up. But I managed to stay no more than his hip length behind and then the air around me changed and became familiar. We were here.

The charred remains lay in an exhausted collapsed heap but the years of neglect and growth had crawled over most of it and now one had to look closely just to gather that those were some beams floundered in the grass. It seemed to have its own gravitational pull which drew me cautiously closer. I stepped lightly as though if I moved wrong the earth beneath me would swallow me whole. I could almost picture the volunteer searchers gingerly plucking the hot bones of my family from the black pit of ashes. They had retrieved every one down to the little finger bones. Our death designer who handled the deceased had no qualms arranging their bones in a pine box. I lined the edge with satin, with the help of the others who came to help out of respect for my parents. One of the handmaids to the noble families council member sewed in the soft white padding as if we were going to lay them down upon a soft cushioned bed. Then the death designer got to work knowing which puzzle piece belonged to who as if she could study the bones beneath our skin before we rotted and placed them down on the gentle fabric. They were stark black in contrast to the virginal white of the coffins confines. It was as if I was peering at time itself as I looked at their bones forming a skeletal structure. Like they had been dug up after all these years and all the cells that made them up melted away.

We buried the bones. I thank the death designer for her beautiful work. I kissed the hands of the women that helped me prepare the funeral, those that brought me meals, and didn’t let me drown before I found my place in this world. I never wanted to gain the status my parents had for fear of being heard of and found like they had been. So even with the coin I earned all these years later I refused a carriage, refused the purchase of a horse, and refused hiring hands to help. I was hidden away. I wore my mask so well that I ignored the pitying looks as our village grew and it seemed those who remembered my parents had been phased out by the newcomers. 

So now when I touch the charred beam that was once part of my grandmother and grandfathers house I can’t help but feel guilty about not paying my respects to the den that brought me so much love and joy. I heard the snap behind me and saw Sasuke circling the perimeter and settling in a spot behind the thick mass of trunks only ten feet from where the archway and door had been. It was if he was putting his paws in the same spot his younger self had.

“Here is where I watched you.” He spoke quietly but with conviction. I navigated the bumpy terrain over the house. The foyer that dawned antlers above the threshold, the twin stairs that led to the balcony guarded with railing to the three guest rooms and their room. The baking room. The basement. The living quarters. The meal hall. The painting room where gramma taught me how to paint. My room. The room I once shared with mother when we stayed over while father was away on business. Our bodies hugging one another and the wind outside was cruelly bitter but inside this cabin it was never cold. All the rooms were warm and alive.

“I called you little red.” I turned in the middle of the ruins and smiled.

“How do you know what color my hood was if you become colorblind as a wolf?” He tapped his chin with his human fingers.

“I suppose the same way I know that blood is red. It has that taste.”

“Colors don’t have tastes.”

“They do. I know what the bright contrast of that color means as sure as I know fleas are a terrible enemy.”

He was at my side. I didn’t protest when he walked over sacred ground and gingerly lift my hand guiding me to the back of the property. We stopped. There were patches of dead grass that no longer grew. As if someone laid a brick upon the ground and was stripped of its natural way of life. No rain could feed it, no sunlight could get through to make it strong, and no oxygen was allowed in. So the indent of where the brick had been was forever bare and bore no more life. I looked at him confused. He faced me obscuring my view of the patches and I knew looking into those golden eyes what it meant that no life could filter through.

“The ground is sour. It has tasted blood and was disgusted by the tainted offering that it deemed them unworthy to be given to her bosom beneath the earth. Their bodies have been rejected to be taken to ground. They are forever fettered to the darkness of the sea.”

I was sure by the summer solstice my belly would be swollen. Four months too late to join the elated fray of showing new life. But it stayed flat. I lived for the moments we gave to one another day by day. But I was not part animal like him. My thoughts always sought the future. And it put me in the dregs of despair. What had I been doing? I was so caught up in the folly of forgetting myself whenever he held me in his arms or whispered in my ear that I stopped planning ahead. Maybe that’s how most felt when winter was upon us. But I had extended my deadline and now I was chastising myself for become idle in my thoughts. I was a spinster…as far as the others were concerned. I was still unmarried, I wasn’t being courted by any of the past suitors that called on me, and what would it look like if I had a child out of wedlock? As I went to the fields like the rest of the women often did to collect things for herbs, powders, and medicine I was keeping in step with the red headed woman I often delivered food to. She too was like me. But she had four different men calling to court her. But like me, she had lost her parents coming here. She was a year my senior but still, she had the same look in her eye I found in myself when looking in the mirror.

She was matching me stride for stride. She was always getting tea leaves from me. The chai woman I dubbed her. She caught me watching gingerly acquiring a nettle without letting her skin come in contact with a plant and gave a playful shrug.

“Nettle tea is delicious when ingested. But if one was to touch it, your skin will feel like it is on fire, it will itch, it will swell, and it will hurt like hell.”

“What do you think about the tariffs?” I avoided her gaze pretending to busy myself by pruning a head of foxgloves fitting the stems into the open mouth of my basket.

“As long as I have coin within my coffers, I don’t mind the small raise.” She scoffed.

“Small? That is what only people who have coin to throw say. For us others who scrape to get by it is far too inflated to live comfortably.”

“Perhaps. Then again it depends on what our coin is being used for?”

“They say a wall is to be built.” My fingers froze on the thin neck of a foxglove. My throat becoming parched and my heart stuttering.

“How came you by that information?”

“Whispers. And closer ones tell me that it is to keep the growing population of mountain lions out. Others say it is our population that grows and is in need of keeping the good in and bad seeds out. The harbors are clogging with those who seek to make it in the mountains.”

“City folk never last long here.” Her thin pink lips drew into an amused quirk. The tone in her voice changing, mocking those we’ve come into contact with already.

“Where be the lights in the wood?” I smiled back continuing our little act.

“What light would that be good sir?”

“The lamp oils that should be hung from thar branches. How else are ye supposed to get through the wood on a dark night as this?” We both laughed drawing the turning of heads from others. We then busied ourselves to avoid such glares and lowered our chatter. We were always onslaught by foreigners questions. There were plenty of books mother showed me with colorful sketching’s of tall spires and clustered buildings that seemed to lean on one another for support. Cities. The word alone left a foul taste in my mouth. It was too tangible. Too materialistic. I preferred the quieter life. The one where we coexisted next to the animals, not dug structures overtop their lands.

She cradled her basket on her bony hip, the pearl cream of her dress shimmered in the sunlight fanning down on our crows and baking us into a sweat. Her red curls hung loosely around her shoulders, green eyes waiting for me to acknowledge her.

“Why don’t ya stop over for dinner tonight? Or do ya got a sweetheart waitn’ for ya?” It was the first time I heard her accent. Irish. I smiled and opened my mouth to accept but shrunk into myself, the words dying in my throat. She gave a small pout. “Don’t tell me. Is it that stout that lives next door to ya?” I felt my cheeks burn and I cleared my throat itching to have an excuse to run away.

“He’s just a good friend.”

“How about the charmer that’s been sneakin’ into yer window? A real romeo is he not?” Just as fast as my temperature rose to a boil so too did it drop until ice quivered into my skin. I swallowed.

“How do you mean?” She let out a little scoff as if I was mocking her or testing her validity.

“The stud that’s usually behind yer little house tendin’ to the chickens. Course I only caught him but once, and it was practically nightfall but I saw him none-the-less.”

“He didn’t slip into my window.”

“T’was a joke.” I knew she wanted to press more out of me. But before she could linger on the topic I agreed to the dinner invitation. Perhaps too eagerly.

“I’ll be by at twilight.” She smiled and nodded swaying her hips as she bound away. She wheeled around on the heel of her foot calling out to me as if she’d forgotten to relay something to me. Her voice was back to our brusque tone.

“Oh, and you do not where it is right?” I nearly rolled my eyes to the heavens. But perhaps she did change locations. She seemed to notice my furrowed brow and her laughter carried on the wind as her words faded as she turned. “Still clear across town, same spot!”

We met inside a hairs breadth apart. But as I was eager to hear what her day entailed while I was gone she had rushed past me to her room. I followed regressing back to a newborn pup on the heat of her trail. I banned her escape from doorway watching her fuss about her room gathering new shifts and a dress.

“Why are you moving like its migration day?” She was back to her red oak closet doors pulling out a corset and down her old dress went pooling at her feet. I groaned feeling all my muscles constrict. I would have given anything to leave marks all over the graceful arch of that soft back. She must have heard the noise I released because she was shielding herself from my gaze keeping her back to me and her dress close to hide her front.

“I was invited to dinner tonight.” 

“A friend?”

“Sort of…I think…I wouldn’t say we’re close but we do bond on less hectic days.” I felt the growth like ivy that was unburnable and unshakable creep up snaking over all my organs. Jealousy. I knew what my mother spoke of. I chose my mate. Wolf or not I found no other female to my liking after I imprinted on her. I wanted to ravish only her. I felt sick. Like the illness made me draw to her and I would never allow it to purge from my body in medicine or fevers. But she made me feverish. Made everything in me come alive. In that same logic, I wanted her to be the only one to make those intimate faces to. I wanted to be the only one to hear her little noises. To smell when she was in heat. To comply when she raised her hips and practically whined and begged me to enter her. Maybe humans and animals in that aspect were more alike. I knew she wasn’t making those noises to pretend to be one of my kind. That was human and natural. I loved the pearl raised scar on her lower back and upper right shoulder. I loved all her stories of where she acquired them.

So now I glowered at her. I couldn’t shake the greed inside. It clawed angrily until I could bate it away. “The woodsman?” She had slipped her shift on over her small frame. She erased the marks of my fingertips on her waist. She tied the laces to the front allowing her soft breasts to perk from the bowl that cut off to thrust them forward in a tasteful manner. She slipped her red dress with the high slit to the thigh on. Then she pulled on the corset fitting it to her bodice and tying it off up from her naval to just under the other arch of her dress. Her breasts would be still on any movement she made.

“No. It’s a woman.” My bones settled. I felt all the tension slip from my body and I hadn’t realized I was on the pads of my feet until my heals touched down to the floorboards. I strolled over to her taking the limp bow of string in my hand and giving it a light tug. She lightly slapped my fingers tutting me.

“Leave it.” She mumbled. My fingers floated under her chin lifting her gaze to me.

“I wouldn’t be long.” She gave me a coy little smirk and I wanted to bend her over her vanity and take her erasing that defiant expression.

“I said let it be.”

“Do you have to wear the scarlet dress with the high slit?” my fingers were gliding over the velvety surface of her leg up where the slit ended. Three finger lengths more and I felt the cotton of her panties giving her another disapproving scowl. Maybe I could seduce her into submission. Make her forget about the dinner entirely. She looked at the resolve in my eyes and gently touched her fingers to my cheek.

“My friend saw you. I thank the Saints that you were at least wearing the pants I set out for you that day.” What cares did I have if another female saw me? I only wanted my Lily to see me. And she did. Both halves of me. I slid my fingers to her inner thigh feeling the weight of her skirt on the side of them until I found the real slit I ached to have. She let out a startled gasp and responded by pressing her body into mine, arresting my finger between her thighs as her knees clamped shut and the muscles of her thighs held my wrist. “Please…” She breathlessly let out.

I took up her chin once more when she crumpled into me. “Just let me get you out of these laces.”

“No, I mean please stop distracting me and delaying me.” I kissed her velvet lips, then each cheek, then her nose, and then to the throat all the while in between kisses loosing words in heated flourishes upon her skin.

“I’m. Not. Distracting. You.” I could hear the battle in her wavering. I smirked against her skin.

She was swaying against me losing her resolve. “Yes you uh---you are.” Her words were made of air floating and barely considered anything as she hummed and clung to me for fear her feet would give out and she’d fall.

She pulled back and I let her. “You know we’ve rolled in those sheets for more than the amount of time I’ve had them right? Don’t pout like a child.” She gave my cheek a gentle pat before slipping on her socks and her brown boots. She laced them up deliberately extending that long delicious leg so her foot propped against a small stool. She leaned down revealing the arch of her back and the dress parted down the middle of the leg being displayed. It dangled like a sheaf of crimson waterfall. I could fit perfectly in that position she was using. My eyes glossed down to her ass sticking out to me, wiggling, inviting me to touch the padded warm muscle. I let out another groan rubbing my hands in frustration at my face.

“It is still a warm night. That’s why I wear the dress with the slit.”

“Oh yes, blame it on the weather.” I rolled my eyes to her and away she left. I found her waist scooping her back into my arms and guiding her to the wall until her back was pressed to it and she was trapped. That lovely full chest thrust up in angry heaves of her breath. I placed a kiss against one then the other feeling her nerves ripple in a shudder. I opened my mouth but her fingers found the slack of my bottom jaw before I had a chance to do it.

“Don’t. Bite.” She hissed softly. I liked when she got a little upset. The more frustrated she was the rougher the sex. I licked at her fingers tasting pollen.

“You were in the fields today. Too bad I couldn’t visit.”

“And where were you? Off killing things I suppose?”

“Little red.” I growled pressing into her. I felt the bend of her knee at my side. I felt the heat of her sex at my pelvis, I saw the lid of her eyes hood and I could see the lust there despite her shrugging off my advances. I went for her earlobe and nibbled. My brother bit my ears plenty when I was a pup but this sensation was a far cry from that. She mewled. I bulged. I could feel her heartrate flutter.

“I was bringing home dinner.” I lied gnashing my teeth at the soft skin under her throat. She clawed her fingers into my bare shoulders shifting and pulling away.

“Speaking of that.”

“No.” I protested. She went to the center room, I followed. “You’re cruel.” She gave me a sideways slight and was at the door. Her hand was ready to command it open and it obeyed by yawning a hands length open. I came behind her on swift quiet feet. I palmed my hand just above where hers lingered and quietly shut the door trapping her against it. I leaned my forehead on the wood to become a temporary weight.

“No.” I said again. I heard her breath against the wood and then she turned to me giving me a soft and sweet kiss.

“I promise I’ll be back before midnight.”

“That’s too late. It does not take one that long to eat food.”

“No, but it does if one is to be polite and socialize.”

“You humans and your rules.”

“You beasts and your impulses to just do.” She leaned on her tiptoes and whispered softly in my ear. “Besides. I promise to devote tomorrow’s eve solely to you.”

I trailed my hand down the curve of her side and gave one of her cheeks a squeeze. She squeaked in surprise and I made the point to sigh contently. She rolled her eyes smacking my chest and then in another flash she was gone leaving me to strew in my anger. She was going to regret that promise tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> Here I go again I'm back at it with another spin on a classic *tips hat*


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